Melissa | December 15, 2011
Five years ago, even though we didn’t know it, our bouncy, pouncy, Ty-ger of a child entered the world albeit 15 weeks early. He joined our family at 2 1/2 years old and our lives haven’t been the same.
Unlike our other two, he didn’t respond to cause-effect discipline or intuitively learn anything. We still have [...]
Melissa | November 23, 2011
Because November is National Adoption Month, I’d be remiss in not blogging about it or at least giving an update on Ty (and our current adoption process).
On paper, Ty’s almost 5.
There’s one camp that see him as 5 and expect him to act that way. They lay out how he should be acting based on his [...]
Melissa | October 9, 2011
Our long home study interview was today. Each agency and country is different, but this will be 2 of 4 (our orientation meeting at our agency counted as #1).
Again, since each agency and country is different, your interview will probably look a little bit different but this is how ours went today.
Our social worker did [...]
Melissa | October 2, 2011
This is kind of a post-in-progress. We find ourselves with a strong-willed child from a hard place in our home. I’m hoping there are more of you out there.
For our purposes, I’m going to define the key words like this:
Strong-willed: Thrives on conflict. Has difficulty obeying right away…ever. Always fights to be “right.”
From a hard [...]
Melissa | September 26, 2011
If you bake out all the collagen from a bone, and tap it with a mallet, it shatters.
The Pilgrims built rectangular houses out of lumber.
The Wampanoags built dome-shaped houses with large pieces of bark as walls.
In the midst of keeping up with schooling, we’ve been finishing the last of our paper chase. We were assigned [...]
Melissa | September 24, 2011
I interrupt the normally scheduled Thing Adoptive Parents Should Know . Did you even notice that was a weekly Saturday occurence? Probably not.
In case you’re wondering, we’re still having physicals corrected AGAIN for our home study. I’d rather not talk about it.
Homeschooling. There’s a happier subject. At least today. We’re doing really well despite a false [...]
Melissa | August 13, 2011
Regardless of which adoption journey you are on, you will need to complete a home study. As part of your home study, you will need to gather a bunch of documents. Although this list may vary a little from state to state and agency to agency, it will give you a good idea of what [...]
Melissa | July 2, 2011
Now that we’re a couple months into our second adoption process, I can say that not all agencies are created equal. In our case, I can’t qualify one as better than the other…yet. They’re just different. Our first agency has been around for 60 plus years. They’ve been doing international adoptions for over 30 years. [...]
Melissa | June 25, 2011
*****PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT*****
There is a giveaway going on until midnight. Don’t forget to enter.
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You’d think since we’ve adopted before that we wouldn’t be daunted by our second paper chase, right? Wrong.
Korea’s process is drastically different than most other international programs because the family does not adopt in-country. Instead the trip is pretty much to just gain [...]
Melissa | May 27, 2011
Road #1: Derek’s Calendar all started when Derek served for a couple years at MTW’s AIDS project in Addis Ababa. Between book club and our Global Outreach [GO] Team at church, we see a lot of Derek and he still has a lot of Ethiopia connections.
Road #2: The president of the non-profit with which we [...]
