She... did it!

Over 5 years ago a little girl name Aliya crawled up on my lap at my mom's house in Washington DC. Aliya was adopted from Kazakhstan. Aliya looked at me first very seriously looking at my face and then laughed. What are you laughing at I said. She said simply,"Hey we look alike."

I knew right then and there that you bond as close with an adopted child.

She was the one who planted the seed. The seed to adoption, the seed to Central Asia. Cheers to Aliya!

She...did it.......and them too!

Some of our friends kids + our nieces & nephews:
Jacobi, Anu, Kaelen, Zane, Anais, Corinna, Owen, Sophia, & Kizuki

baby o : Introduction

So here goes our ride to parenthood. For the sake of our soon to be daughter we are calling her "baby o". Both Eric and I are excited for this journey but it did not start here..to back up we have been "trying" for around four years. But truth be told we had always entertained adoption and felt maybe having kids at a later age, the fact that it be OUR kid seemed less important than having a child in our lives. So we have finally made the decision that international adoption is the right choice for us.

The introduction meeting at UCSF for IVF (fertility treatments) kind of sealed the deal for me when I walked in (20 minutes late) and there were 300 couples, YES 300, sitting in this large auditorium. I myself came alone. I knew then that I was not going to go through this no matter what my 39 year old hormones were screaming at me. My judgmental mind was screaming, but why do you all you people have to have kids from YOUR genes? Slowly the voices and fears instilled from society released and adoption seemed like the perfect option. I am in no way judging that wanting to having your own kid or do fertility treatments is not the right answer for some. Just seeing so many people in my same boat just kind of brought it home for me. And I walked up to my doctor and said thank you and good bye.

There are many good things I see so far about adoption, I am sure I'll know more once we actually have the little one in our hands. My friend Heidi says that adoption is good because it leaves less of a footprint on the earth. Eric likes that reason. But truth be told I think he just has a lot of love to give. For me I think that I have always had a soft spot for ethnic kids and immigrants newly living in the US. Maybe for me adopting parallels the same need one has to relate to your kid. Maybe it was that we wanted a girl. My friend Cathy says, pay now or pay later. I guess we are choosing to pay later. (Cathy, let's compare notes again when our kids our 18) I just have to be honest, if it would have happened naturally...great. But with some deep soul searching I learned that I just wanted a great kid and did not need it to spawn from my genes. They say parenthood is a self less task anyway, so adoption might really be this. The statistics are that 1% of orphans in the world are adopted. So maybe we'll at least feel good about giving a baby a home.

So here we go.....our adventures of baby o, my dear Eric and me! Who will she be? And where will she take us?