The 3 Big Questions ... And Answers

Time to address a few more specific questions about our adoption decision ...

1) Why did we decide to adopt at all? For those of you who know us, you know our "yours, mine & ours" family. Landree and Channing are Rick's two from his first marriage, Jordan is mine, and Carson is ours. After raising Jordan as an only child and fielding his many questions about when he was going to have brothers and sisters, and then seeing how very close Landree and Channing are as sister and brother, we knew that we didn't want Carson to be an only child. With the huge age difference between him and the other three, for all practical purposes he would have been raised as an only child. I suppose we could have tried to have another of our own, but we decided to adopt for a few reasons ... the main reason came from watching Carson. He is such a smart, loving, confident child and we know that much of this comes from him knowing how much he is loved. It is such a tragedy that there are so many children in the world who don't have that feeling of being loved, and we wanted to give a child that same feeling that we hope all of our children have. That, and I didn't want to have to go through pregnancy at age 40+!!

2) Why did we choose a toddler? Carson was 3 years old when we decided to pursue adoption and we knew that he would be 4 or close to it by the time we had our new little girl. We wanted both children to be close in age, but not so close that they would be in the same grade in school. And we wanted Carson to be the older brother, keeping the birth order. So we asked for a little girl between the ages of 1 and 3. As time went on, we somehow just began preparing our lives for a child closer to 3 ... buying bunkbeds?? Maybe it had something to do with dealing with a 3 year old at the time? I know that bringing a toddler home will present a totally different set of issues than bringing home an infant ... midnight cries instead of midnight feedings, teaching English instead of just teaching to speak, etc. And we are prepared for all of that. I was communicating recently with another parent who adopted a toddler and she mentioned how her child is finally beginning to feel more comfortable exploring the house. This brought a smile to my face because I remember when Carson became mobile ... I distinctly remember when he too began to feel more comfortable going into other rooms by himself without Mommy or Daddy being in there with him. And then it occurred to me that many of the transition problems/fears that scared us to begin with are normal things that even biological children experience. Besides, there is something so enchanting about watching a toddler develop and grow. Babies are sweet and adorable, but toddlers ... every single day, it is something new and wonderful. If you have never watched a toddler discover something new for the first time and try to figure it out, you just don't know what you are missing. And then when they start to talk, they will say something you had no idea they knew and say it at the right time in the right context ...it will just blow you away! Toddlers are little people in the making and they are truly amazing to watch!

3) Why did we choose Ethiopia? This is the easiest one to answer. Because of our ages, we discovered that we could not adopt domestically and get the toddler age that we wanted. We chose Gladney before we chose the country, so that certainly narrowed down our list of possible countries from which to adopt. We knew that we didn't want to wait 2+ years (China) or have to make several trips (Eastern Europe). We briefly considered the Latin countries because of the Latin influence in Texas. We thought it would be much easier to keep our daughter's culture alive for her being in Texas. But ultimately, we decided on Ethiopia. I don't know that there was any one real reason why we chose Ethiopia, but since race was not an issue to either of us, it was certainly never out of the picture. My sister spent time in Africa in the Peace Corps, and her experience there also helped to influence our decision. Rick started looking up all kinds of information on Ethiopia after we made our decision, and it only reinforced our decision. Then Landree gave me the book There Is No Me Without You for my birthday last year, and I couldn't wait to get there. What a wonderful, historic, proud country! We couldn't be more excited that our Kali will have such a rich heritage! And all of the blogs that we have been reading ever since do nothing but make us anxious to meet these remarkable people!