My dear friend Steph at Adventures in Babywearing wrote today about a wonderful, wonderful man who is creating the most amazing gift for his wife this year…the Mother Letter Project.

He is asking YOU to share your stories, share your concerns or worries, share your wisdom, no matter how you came by it.
 
As adoptive parents, as adoptive children, as first parents…we have different stories. Please tell them. They are just as precious and they should be heard too.

July 24, 2005
We have court tomorrow at 9:30. All of our papers seem in order and T and H are hopeful that things will go well.
We got passport pictures yesterday and are our plane tickets so it seems like we are on schedule to fly out Tuesday evening.
Thank you to everyone for your support and prayers. It has meant the WORLD to us to know that you all care and are looking out for us. Going into this process was hard enough, but knowing that we have friends, most whom we have never met, is worth its weight in …read more

July 23, 2005
Things are looking slightly better now that we have underwear…or should I say smelling???
For those of you who have not caught the Curse Part 1, 2, and 3…we just got our luggage today, were denied our adoption yesterday, and have pretty much had a miserable trip…except that we have had a wonderful time visiting with our beautiful son.
The update on the court proceedings: We were able to get a hold of our doctors back at home and within twenty minutes they faxed a handwritten document detailing that they were able to provide medical judgments regarding our health …read more

Remember that this series of posts is from 2005…(July 22, 2005)
Well, it looks like we are officially the first family to EVER be
DENIED in the region of Arkhangelsk, if only temporarily. We did
not get our adoption granted today as we had hoped.
The judge was very specific about our medical records and wanted verification on our physicians licenses’ as well as their ability to evaluate medical conditions such as psychological conditions and drug or alcohol additions as general practitioners. Additionally, he
was very concerned that my doctor had a medical license for “controlled substances”, which by our understanding is that she can …read more

It is hard to imagine that three years ago this morning I boarded a plane and left to go bring my son home from Russia.
The summer of 2005 was very trying in regards to Russian adoptions, as Peggy Hilt had just murdered her youngest daughter (and I mean just).  We packed our bags knowing that we NEEDED extra prayers to get through customs as potential adoptive parents and knowing we would be scrutinized every step of the way.
To put it bluntly, our second adoption trip was absolute hell and I would never, in any lifetime, wish it upon

Despite what views our society has traditionally had on orphans and adoption I am hoping that times will change and our children won’t be referred to as orphans (because statistically I believe that most are not actually orphans and because the connotation stinks).
However, if one looks at this fabulous list of adoptees, adoptive parents, and, yes, orphans, one will see that no matter where they came from or whom they were raised by, they are extraordinary people.
Is that nature vs. nurture?

From A Birth Project:
According to a BBC report, a group of ‘charity workers’ located in Chad were arrested on the tarmark of the airport with an airplane full of about 103 children. The group denies they planned to sell the children for adoption, instead claiming they were sending them to ‘host families’ at a nice price of 2,400 euros (US$3,450) each. The group also claimed the children were from Darfur, Sudan and they were rescuing them from their ‘war torn lives’. It turns out many of the children were from Chad and not without families.
Apparently Guatemala is not the only …read more

Number of Adoptions in 2006: 1381
According to the US Embassy the following list items are not legal requirements but administrative guidelines but local agencies should follow them.

Many parents have difficulties getting their children to sleep but adopted children come with their own host of problems. Parents are often bleary-eyed, caffeine jittered, desperate balls of nerves. Or, at least I was. And ALL I wanted was some respite and a good night’s sleep.
I asked everyone I knew to let me into their parenting club…to reveal their sleep secrets and their tricks to the sleep trade and some did…others just told me to “wait it out” or Ferberize him because he’ll eventually come around and get used to it. Well, adoptive parents, it just does not work that …read more

The hardest part of adopting a child from another country is being able to meet your child and then having to say goodbye. Your brain knows that you have to do it but your heart feels like it catapulted down to your stomach and started doing cartwheels the moment you handed your child back. How could this be natural part of having children?