Today we met with a lovely local couple who adopted 3 children from Ethiopia about several years ago. One of my biggest concerns about adopting interracial is how that child will fit into the local community. This is not a very diverse area and some of the adoption literature I've been reading scared me into thinking that we would be irrevocably harming an Ethiopian child to try to raise them here. Thankfully, those fears have been somewhat calmed by our meeting. They shared with us that the community has been very excepting and that they have had very little problems integrating their children. There are of course always issues that can and do arise, but those will happen anywhere...right? They very graciously invited us over for dinner this weekend. They have lots of video footage of their trip and of Africa in general that we are very interested in taking a look at. It'll also be great to meet their kids.

ZM and I have a lot of things to decide. We initially wanted to adopted one infant but we feel drawn to the older, harder to place children very strongly. ZM is passionately opposed to adopting out of birth order and I understand his concerns. Our girls are so young; in 5 years we could adopt a couple of children up to 5 or 6 years old. Right now, if we stick to birth order, we are limited to a child 18 months or younger. I'm also a strong advocate of adopting siblings, which would be much harder if not impossible under the circumstances. We always have the option of waiting...but I hate that idea. We need to do lots and lots of talking!

posted at 3:08 PM  
Labels: Adoption