homeschool, adoption, parenting, family, homemaking
On the shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel, just a few minutes after meeting Ashley for the first time, I had a little revelation. She was talking about her pregnancy (seriously adorable baby bump!), and I realized what I’m missing with these two new children of mine: Pregnancy. Hearts and minds need time [...]
Last week, my phone rang and the little voice on the end belonged to 5-year-old Scout: “Hi, Ms. Jamie. We just had our goodbye visit, and I wanted to ask if you would be our new family.” Tears sprang to my eyes and I clamped my hand over my mouth so I didn’t lose my [...]
In my perfect world, every kid would have a safe and loving family, and do things like merrily bake cookies together every day. But, it’s not a perfect world. Right now we’re in the midst of the process of picking. We’re not talking about melons or avocados here (which are both hard to pick, by [...]
I am an enthusiastic adoption advocate, but as I’ve said before, I never want to paint such a rosy picture that families enter into the process blindly. Today’s post focuses on some of the challenges within the adoption process, as well as what you can do even if you don’t feel called to adopt. What [...]
In many families, like ours, there were already children in the home when a new adopted child joined the family. Questions I’m often asked about this include: How do we handle the blending with children already in the home? Are there jealousy issues? What about birth order? What do the kids (if not infants) call [...]
I’ve heard it said that if we had to wait until we could afford to have children, we would never have them. A quick internet search will show you that the cost of raising a child has risen 40% in the last decade, and if you want to give yourself a bit of a scare, [...]
Since I’m just one mom in one family, I asked for input from other adoptive parents on what kinds of misconceptions they’ve faced from the general public, but also some misconceptions that we adoptive parents had before we adopted. The parents who contributed to this post vary greatly: we have input from those who have [...]
Adoption can take many different forms, but we’ll cover the basics today. I don’t have all the answers, of course, but I hope to give you a good overview so that you have enough information to pursue additional answers you may need. – Kinship Adoption: When birth parents are unable to care for a child, [...]
Current statistics say there are an estimated 163 million orphans in the world. Try for just a moment to wrap your mind around this: if you wanted to look into the face of each and every orphan for just ONE second, it would take more than FIFTY years to do so. Each year more than [...]
Finally, our television interview is online! We missed the actual airing because it’s at a time when we’re in church on Sundays, but I was closely watching for when it would be online. This is the full episode, which is 23 minutes (since commercials have been cut out). Our part is interspersed throughout. I really [...]
I haven’t really talked much yet about our subsequent adoption. Partly this is because there are so many more things to consider this time around, and partly because this isn’t a done deal. I relate this to marriage, in that, just because you’re “ready” to get married doesn’t mean your future spouse will immediately *poof* [...]
Yesterday, in the sunshine of our backyard, Lindsey and I had one of our best talks yet. Earlier in the day, she had gotten angry with me about something I said, something she took entirely the wrong way. I was feeling sad and frustrated that our relationship still isn’t where I’d like it to be [...]
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