Recently I answered a post for someone wanting to learn to crochet. She would pay me in fresh eggs. I answered the add (saying I wasn’t much of a crocheter but I would try to teach her the basics). The conversation veered towards our kids (I met her through a parents group and we were communicating via email, and hadn’t met). We both have kids the exact same age. My immediately felt the need to write “our daughter is 10 months old but we are an adoptive family and she has only been home 2 1/2”. Then I thought – wow is it that important that I say that? Nope not really.

The issue is that I feel kind of like a fraud. I haven’t been a parent for 10 months. I have been a parent for 2.5 months. I wonder when that feeling starts going away. We are “new” parents to an older baby. On the outside, we look like we have been together forever. I feel like we have been together forever. We are a family. We know each other, we know how to make each other laugh, Davy is a really really happy baby. It means we MUST be doing something right. Right? I have to remind myself constantly that even though we are new parents- everyone is a new parent in a way because these kids change so fast. I have no idea how to parent a new born baby, but at 10 months. I think we are doing okay.

I feel like I might still have some post-traumatic adoption syndrome. The waiting, the pain of the adoption is still so raw that it makes me feel like I need to wear it as a badge of honor. I want to tell everybody–we went through this really really hard thing, and look at us. We are happy. She is home. We are all okay. We are all so in love.

We traveled with a dear family in May. Their kid’s aren’t home yet, caught up in the stupid bureaucratic nightmare that is international adoption. They are hoping and praying their kids will be home by Christmas. Christmas! I am so invested in their kids coming home because I understand their pain so so so much. These kids need to come home to their forever family. Our dear friends need to be able to heal from the pain that is their adoption process. I am so invested in their kids coming home because I feel like, when they do, as some point we will be able to shut this door on the last two years of our lives. So if your a praying type (I am not, but I am a knitting type- so that is what I am doing). Please send all of your positive thoughts and vibes and prayers to our dear friends Mike and Erika Sosna and their beautiful loved boys, Levi and Aaron.

Here is a photo of Davy (with runny nose) and her Levi stand in: