Adoption Day

In celebration of our second adoption day.

One Child, by LMA

Sunrise Two Years Ago, looking out from our hotel room in Haiti, 2005

One Child
by L.M.A., November 2000

One child for a nation speaks
Her eyes, they ask, implore-
Will you?
She is innocence personified
She is hope
She is future
What will you answer?
Hunger- she has known it
Pain- she has felt it
Tears- her parents cry them
because they wanted only joy
for her
for Haiti
Yet, when she smiles, when she laughs-
that baby laugh, that knows no sorrow
In that moment
when her eyes are shining-
she again speaks for a nation
She asks-
Will you?
But, it matters not because
given the chance
SHE will.

Heather & Kyle's Hands Two Years Ago, at home, 2005

Celebrating Our Adoption Day: Photos of Our First Week

Our first week together, in Haiti. The first two photos were taken by Braydon just minutes after arriving at the hotel from the orphanage -- within the first hour of having the boys. Looking at these photos now it feels deeply significant that K & O are still wearing the "dress up" clothes they had been dressed in for our arrival at the orphanage.

We did not carry our camera with us while we were out and about each day in Port Au Prince. These few photos were taken in our hotel room:

In the airport, bound for Miami:

The view of the "suburbs" of Port, from our hotel room:

The boys, coming alive:

An AP photographer from Britian, also staying at the hotel, took our first family photo for us. We used it for our Adoption Announcement, and it hangs in the hallway of our house now. I remember that even though we had only had the boys for a few days, we already felt like a deeply connected family:

Celebrating Our Adoption Day: Photos of Our First Weeks Home

We have hundreds and hundreds of photos of the boys, many of them we absolutely love, and some of which are really good. I thought about trying to post a series of photos representing our first two years as a family. But as I started to look through the photo files on my computer, I just knew it would be impossible to choose just a few. So, I'm limiting myself to our first five weeks home. Here are ten of our favorites spanning those first precious weeks...

K & O in their bedroom, our first day home:



Settling in, slowly but surely:

One of our first visitors, our friends Kristen & Darin, took this photo of us in our living room. It is our first family photo on U.S. soil:

Madly in love:

As I was looking through the photos of our first weeks together, the transformation in the boys was more transparent than ever to me. Here are K & O, in the kitchen, at the end of our first five weeks home:

Things We Did

This is a long post, one I've been working on for several days now.

Tomorrow is our Adoption Day -- two years since we got our boys. In these days leading up to January 31 we find ourselves consumed with thinking about our family's adoption journey and remembering back to those days in January of 2005 when we were preparing to travel to Haiti, then holding our babies for the first time, then spending our first week together in Port Au Prince. For awhile now I've been meaning to post about a particular topic that several people from all over the country (and the world actually) have emailed me about since we started this blog... and given that we're thinking so much about our adoption experience right now, I thought now would be a good time to do it. The topic is this: Things We Did In the Very Beginning with Kyle and Owen. The reason I want to write about this is because I've been receiving emails and private blog comments/correspondence from people asking me about the early phases of when we had the boys home. They ask things like, "How did you do it?" or "What advice do you have for us as we're about to bring home our baby?" or "You're kids seem so well-adjusted, can you share the things you did to foster their transition and attachment?" It is all very flattering (the thought that people think I'm doing at least a semi-okay job at this mothering thing!), but at the same time, let's be real: it just is what it is -- the seeking of information from somebody who has been there. I remember how desperate I was for any real-life, hands-on insight based on actual-experience, so I can relate to these questions very very well. I really wish I had started this blog a long time ago, because then everything would have been so much better documented, but of course I was too tired then (!!!), so, I'm going to do my best to write about this topic now.

First of all, I just have to be sure to say -- for the record -- that I am by no means an expert on this topic!! In fact, I feel really awkward writing this post because I don't want anybody out there thinking that I think that I'm all that or anything. So, let me just be crystal clear about where I stand on this: I am just one adoptive mother with just one (well, two actually!) unique experience(s). I also want to be sure to point out that children adopted from orphanages are a special case. And children adopted from contexts of severe deprivation and trauma are a special case. And children adopted as infants (in our case, at age eight months) are a special case. And children who never spent any time in a family or with a mother or parent of any kind are a special case. And children who are adopted to childless couples (who have all the time in the world to focus on them because they don't have other children to be concerned with as well) are a special case. And twins- well, it is stating the obvious to say that twin adoption is very rare... so, twins are an exceptionally special case. So, we have a super-duper-duper-special case on our hands here, and it is important to keep that in mind. It is a unique situation so the things that worked so well for us might not work so well for anybody else. Nevertheless, people are asking for me to share. So, I will -- with all the above caveats -- share.

I'm going to share pretty openly, but of course there are always things that we keep to ourselves and keep private in our family because we are constantly trying to be mindful of respecting our children's privacy and boundaries. Also, I can't possibly write out everything here (we did tons and tons and tons of things, very deliberately, to foster our family's attachments to each other). I'm going to share some things here -- a few things -- but I can't share everything.

So, as we reflect back on what was going on two years ago, and ask ourselves what were the significant things we did that seemed to work well in transitioning our babies and fostering our attachment to each other, what comes to our minds? I'm sure we don't remember all of it (let's not forget folks, we were in a deliriously joyful and deliriously sleep-deprived fog for the first few months!)... but here are some of the things we do remember doing in those first moments, days, weeks, and months with Kyle and Owen.

We decided to adopt in January 2004. I had long been thinking about adoption so I had already done a lot of reading and research on it. And, importantly, Braydon and I had spent six years caring part-time for Maria -- our special sweet pea girl in Boston [[[Hi Maria! --she's often reading this blog]]] -- and so we had some real down-to-earth experience already with dealing with a kid together. But from January 2004-January 2005 (when we got the boys) I literally [literally!] read every single thing I could get my hands on regarding adoption, attachment, Haiti, adoptees, adoptive families, transracial adoption, working mothers, daycare, etc., etc., etc. This ranged from fiction to biography to history to clinical psychology to sociology to cultural studies to family studies to child development and everything else in between... and it was everything from literary books to academic research reports to magazines to internet chat rooms to online resources. I also joined several internet listserves and became very, very active on them (as some of our blog readers probably recall?!). I made friends with everyone I possibly could who had any knowledge or experience whatsoever with Haitian adoption. And some of these people remain very close friends today. You know who you are! :)

Anyway, all of this (the reading and researching and friend-making) was probably the most helpful thing I/we did. Because -- after reading and/or chatting with people (in books or online or on the phone or in person) I'd always recount everything to Braydon. We literally spent just about every single night of the year of 2004 talking about adoption. I'd summarize every thing I learned for Braydon. Sometimes I'd read him quotes from books, sometimes I'd read him notes from my notebook (I actually kept notes a lot), and sometimes I'd just give him out and out scholarly lectures (!!)... but we almost always would then spend a nice chunk of time talking in depth. And I mean, in depth. I think this prepared us better than anything else possibly could have. And we were truly privileged to have had this time to do this. At the end of it all, one book became our pseudo "Adoption Bible"... that book is the classic adoption book -- Attaching in Adoption -- by Deborah Gray (for link to this book on Amazon.com click here). For the first twelve months, at least, this book sat smack in the center of the coffee table in the family room. And we referred to it almost daily in the beginning. And I still pull it out from time to time today. Many of the specific things we did in those first days and weeks with Kyle and Owen we learned from reading that book.

Here are just a few of the key things we did:

*** First and foremost we tried to always remember that attachment goes both ways. It isn't just a matter of the baby attaching to the parent, but of the parent attaching to the baby too. Most adoptive families (hopefully) know this. We tried to let that be real and we tried to be real with that. I could write forever about that, but instead I want to focus on the more specific things we did-- rather than philosophical approaches we had to doing them.

*** Second most important thing I need to say is this: we would be crazy to not recognize and acknowledge how very fortunate we were to have great adoption leave policies from our workplaces. I had the entire spring semester off to be home with the boys, so they didn't start daycare until June. And Braydon had the first six weeks (week one was our week in Haiti, then he was home full-time for our first five weeks home). This was extremely fortunate and we are grateful for that... especially since we had twins.

*** Third thing I want to say is that we did quite a lot of specific stuff related to twins. For example, in the beginning Braydon almost always had Owen and I almost always had Kyle. We did this partly because Owen really strongly preferred Braydon and we wanted him (O) to be as comfortable as possible. But we also did it deliberately because we wanted each of the babies to have a solid primary bond with a parent. Over time we deliberately stretched out the bond so that they each had us both -- but in the very beginning Braydon almost always held, fed, and soothed Owen and I did the same with Kyle. Since this is so rare (so few people adopt multiples) I'm not going to go into great depth about it here. But it is worth mentioning at least because it was a huge part of our experience.

*** Like many babies, K & O had been "trained" to feed themselves at a very young --much too young-- age. They had been holding their own bottles for themselves for a long time before we got them. From our first feeding, we forced them to let us hold their bottles and we insisted on feeding them. This required a lot of force actually, much more than you'd expect to require from an eight month old. They wanted to feed themselves and not have to rely on us. Remember, we were random strangers to them and they had been fending for themselves for quite some time; their natural instinct was to not trust and to resist depending on us. They'd fight us with the bottle feeding. We'd often have to literally hold them down on their backs, and hold their hands and arms down with one hand, while we used our other hand to hold the bottle in their mouths. They had been starving, so they would never even consider refusing a bottle (this worked to our advantage), but they did not like it that we didn't let them be self-sufficient. Owen, especially fought this -- he wanted to feed himself. We'd have to physically restrain him often in order to hold his bottle for him. This was a key way we tried to convey to them what parents were -- parents are people who feed you.

*** We didn't let anyone but us feed them. For at least a few weeks no one else was allowed to give them a bottle or put a spoon in their mouths. This was another key way we tried to convey to them what parents were -- again, parents are people who feed you.

*** Whenever possible, especially during feeding, we worked on having eye contact with the babies. They would avoid it a lot. They didn't want to look a person in the eye. Eye contact is a cue for attachment, and babies will often try to avoid it in an attempt at self-preservation. We'd sometimes have to actually hold their head so their faces were facing ours and we'd get our eyes to within just a couple inches of theirs and try to hold their gaze as long as possible. Kyle, especially, did not like this. He'd avoid eye contact as much as possible. But we worked on it constantly and over time their eyes would hold our gaze for longer and longer.

*** Other cues for attachment with babies that we used constantly: rubbing cheeks, and rubbing the inner palms of hands. The very first time I saw our boys -- in the orphanage -- I was rubbing their cheeks and their palms of their hands. We proceeded to do this numerous times a day every day for a long, long time. I still do this almost daily.

*** In the beginning we held the boys non-stop. They did not like to be held while they were sleeping (they had always slept alone), but we did hold them pretty much constantly when they were awake. We used front-chest-carriers for our week in Haiti, and during those first days together the boys spent 7-9 hours per day in those carriers. It was over 100 degrees, and we were always drenched in sweat, but it was instant bonding. We used those carriers daily for the first few weeks (we tried to do 1-2 hours minimum of "carrier time" daily for each baby)... even just doing chores around the house or going for walks around the neighborhood. This was part of what we did to enact "babying" our babies. Since so much of their infancy they were forced into semi-self-sufficiency, it was critically important for them to be allowed to "re-do" (at least as much as possible) that early infancy stage. We worked hard to let them be 8 month olds (and then 9-10-11-12-month olds), but we also worked hard to let them be newborns.

*** We slept on the floor in their room for the first several days home and whenever needed for the first few weeks. Our boys loved their cribs from the very first night home (they had never had their own crib/space, and each of them seemed to just love it!!!), so they were happy to be in them, but they woke often and needed to know we were right there. So, we slept on an air mattress next to their cribs.

*** We didn't let anyone visit for our first week home, and we left the house only for doctor's appointments and a couple trips for groceries/supplies. For the first few weeks we kept visitors to a minimum. With the exception of my parents (who stayed overnight) we limited visits to an hour or two max. This is done to cement in the idea that this is our house, we (and only we) live in this house, we are a family, and we are the only members of this family.

*** Once we started going on outings (about a month into being home) we kept them brief, and we "celebrated" every time we came home... in the car, in the garage, we'd cheer "We're home!" and make a big production about what a "home" is. We still do this every single time we pull into the garage -- the boys insist on it.

There's a lot more that we did, but those are some of the things I remember most. Some of you might remember other things - so please feel free to post comments here. There are people reading this blog who are in the process of adopting right now and I'm *sure* they would greatly appreciate any thoughts or memories about our journey that anyone would be willing to share here. There are other little kiddos who are gonna come home to their families -- and their families need all the insight they can get! Surprisingly we have readers from all over the world!!!!!!---who woulda thunk it?!!! So, any of you with memories of observing what was going on in the Johnson-McCormick family for those first days/weeks/months with K & O -- please share here by posting a comment below.

Photos of the Day

Food (& Other Blogs' Posts) for Thought

I'm sitting in my office eating my lunch and trying to force myself to take an actual lunch break. I told myself I was going to do no work for a full 1/2 hour while I ate the sandwich I packed myself this morning. So, I started catching up on some of the blogs I like to read. One of them is the blog Anti-Racist Parent (antiracistparent.com). There's an interesting conversation happening on that blog right now regarding this question: Do parents love adopted children differently than biological children? It is a question I have thought about a lot. And a question that Braydon and I have talked about a lot. The Anti-Racist Parent post, and especially the comments in response to it, are worth reading -- not because they conclude anything earth-shattering or make any mind-blowing points (they don't) -- but because they dish out some food for thought: Check it out if you have (or are forcing yourself to have) a little break in your day too! Click Here to read the post and comments.

Post-Script to Last Night's Post

By 7:30 this morning this is what our bedroom looked like:

Braydon couldn't stand it any longer and was up and cleaning at 6:30am. I guess it is good to air our dirty laundry?! ;0

"THIS is How We Do It!" (or, "Things That Fall Through the Cracks")

There are two things colliding here in this post... First, lately Braydon and I have been talking a lot about what our blog says (and does not say) about us; about what we do (and do not) write about and make "public" about our family's "private" life; about what people's representations of themselves (in blogs, in photo albums, in scrapbooks, etc.) --ourselves included-- really represent; etc. One thing you rarely see in blogs (or photo albums, scrapbooks, etc.) are revelations of the 'dark side' of people's lives-- and here I'm not talking about their innermost personal battles or journeys (in fact that kind of stuff is often made very public) -- rather, I'm talking simply about stuff like people's dirty laundry, their messy bedrooms, their not-so-pretty-realities of day-to-day living. We've been talking a lot about what Kyle and Owen will think of their childhood lives if they look at this blog years and years from now and rely on it even to some extent to piece together their own understandings of how we lived our lives. Will it really portray our family's reality at all? Or is it just some glossed up version of non-reality?

Second, lately Braydon and I have been talking a lot about this question we get asked so often... people seem to say stuff to us all the time along the lines of: "How do you do it?!" What they mean by "it" is, how do you manage this whole thing --- this whole two super-active twin boys, two super-active individual careers, super-active family life, seemingly-all-holding-together-nicely-household, ETC. But while to the outside world 'it' (our life/lives) might seem nicely-held-together, to us it all often feels unweildy and out-of-control. One thing is for certain though, whatever it is that we are doing -- we know exactly how we're doing it!! In December I wrote a post about one of the ways we're "doing it" (click here). Today I'm going to post about another one of the ways we're "doing it."

The other night we were heading upstairs to bed at about 11:30. It was a normal typical night like most others-- Since 8:30 when we had gotten the boys to sleep, we had cleaned up supper, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, made our lunches for the next day, neatened up the playroom and family room, sorted through the mail, checked the voicemail, thrown in some laundry, put all the toys into the garage from the driveway, fed the cats, checked email and finished up work, posted to the blog, had a drink together to catch up on the past 24-hours of our lives... and we were exhausted and ready to crash before getting up at 6:30am to start it all again. After checking on the boys and kissing them in their sleep, as we entered our bedroom, this is what we saw:


And Braydon said: "THIS is how we do it!" And we both started laughing loudly. I said, "Yeah, THIS is something we should take a photo of for the blog -- because you're right, THIS is how we do it!!!" We were too tired to get the camera that night -- but I did take the photo tonight (and believe me, the scene in our room has not changed much at all in the past few days!!!).

This is how we do it! We hardly ever make our bed, our clothes are always lying all over the place, and our room is almost always a disaster! The boys' rooms are always neat and clean -- honestly, much of the house is -- but our room is a pit - always! It is just one of the things that falls through the cracks.

So, tonight I want to air our dirty laundry -- no pun intended. I want to do this in part because I think it is important to be honest about how this all works since people just really aren't honest about it (and this is important: growing up nobody ever told us that "having it all" -- i.e., having a two-career-family-life -- would require letting a lot of stuff fall through the cracks). It is important to fess up. I also want to do this so that if K & O ever do read this some day they'll see that we weren't afraid to reveal the 'dark side' of our lives (at least, we weren't afraid to reveal a little bit of it!!! -- trust me, there's a lot more dark where this dark comes from!!!).

So, right now, in this phase of our life/lives -- THIS is (at least in part) how we do it -- THIS is (in part) what falls through the cracks ... at least the cracks of homefront/household management.

Our kitchen sink is almost always filled with dirty dishes:

Our laundry room is almost always overflowing with laundry-in-process:

We order take-out, or eat out, at least once a week:

And... drumroll please... (Mom, you're gonna have a heart attack when you read this:)

... We just took down our Christmas Tree TODAY!!!!!!!!

You know what though? WE'RE SO, SO, SO HAPPY! And... our life is SO INCREDIBLY RICH AND FULL. So rich and so full. And so, so good.

I think that people generally presume that Braydon and I (and people like us) are very "Type-A" high-strung control-freak type personalities. And in some respects there's some truth to that I'm sure... but honestly, we'd never be able to do all this if that were too true... because to do it, you have to be able to let a lot go, you have to be able to relinquish a lot of control to other people, and you have to be able to let a lot of stuff fall through the cracks. We are no experts. We are a work in progress. We still have a lot to learn. But, as of now, THIS is how we do it.

From Our Adoption Journal: Two Years Ago Today

My entry from Friday, January 28, 2005:

"There's an issue with the birthfather's ID. It needs to be authenticated and it is taking forever (as usual). Today -- Friday -- at about 6:00p.m., we made the decision -- We're going on Monday.

We have a zillion emotions and thoughts running through us. Monday we will meet our babies."

Kyle, in the O

Owen, in the O

Creative Play

K & O find their Storyland hats in the laundry room, and the playroom is "water! deep deep water!" and they are "in motorboats!" and "wearing hats!" and "going so fast!" and "the wind blows the hats off!!!!"

K & O pull the door-draft-blocker-thingy away from the door, and use it as a speed bump and "the trucks go bump bump!" and "the cars go soooo fast on the bump bump!" and "bump bump! bump bump!" and "did you seeeee that that?! did you see that bump bump?!!"

K & O get some tupperware containers out of the kitchen drawer, and then use the base of the "Elefun" toy as a "blender!" with a "loud motor!" to "make yogurt smoothie!!" and the Elefun butterflies are "strawberries!" and "did you hear that?!!! that blender is soooo loud!" and "did you seeee that?! those strawberries came out of that blender!!!!" and "GOTTA PUT THOSE STRAWBERRIES BACK IN THAT BLENDER!!!"

Guest Blogger: Alex

This is Guest Blog Post #2 from Alex (in case you didn't read Guest Blog Post #1, and would like to, click here)

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Saturday Guest Blog from aLeX:

Tonight was a joy to be with my favorite boys, just like every other second I spend with them. As the boys finished their dinners and Mama and Papi went to the infamous restaurant, the beautiful angels were asked if they wanted ice cream or a popcycle. They both chose the same, of course, which was the yummy peanut butter ice cream…along with the requested whip cream and sprinkles (and for the life of me I can’t remember for some reason what they call sprinkles…darnit!) As we sat there Owen turns to me and says “Alex, we missed you!” Of course this just makes my heart completely melt and I smile from ear to ear! “I missed you, too, love!” I replied…feeling as though that just wasn’t enough to verbally explain my profound feelings and affection and love I have towards both of them. “I missed you, too!” echoed Kyle….I LOVE THESE BOYS!! Talk about makin a person feel special…golly gee! Then Owen started playing with my necklace and says, “what’s this, alex?” “It’s a neck-liss” I reply trying to annunciate carefully so he’s able to pick up the word. “Neck-liss” he says back. “It’s a pretty necklace, alex” ß what a schmoozer!!!! I can just see it now…Owen and Kyle bringin in their hot dates with the wind!!! Anyhoo…they gobbled their yummy desert up pretty quickly and off they were to play with their toys. Owen picked up the saw and started making the engine noise before even pushing the button! Kyle soon followed suit and they both worked together to “chop down the Christmas tree” to “make it pretty.” (Have I ever said that they’re the most enlightening, uplifting two boys I’ve ever babysat for in my life??!!! I just love these darn kids!) Before I knew it they were putting away the saws and driving around the kitchen on their trains as fast as they possibly could, confusing Cyprus as to which way to run because they each came from opposite directions! “Beep Beep, Cyprus!” Kyle yells. A few moments of time pass by and then Owen announces that its video time. “Bath-time first!” I tell them. “Oh, I can’t, alex,” says Owen. “mmmmHmmm….suuurrreeee,” I reply. “So you do YOU want to take a bath, Kyle?” Kyle looks at Owen for some help with the answer. The answer isn’t exactly a surprise: “No thank you, Alex!” “Owen, do you want to take a bath?” “No thank you, Alex! Video time!” “Nope! Not yet…pj’s first!” So we march upstairs to a few different random tunes that Kyle and Owen choose and we complete the normal routine minus the bath: brush teeth, wash face, change diaper, put on pjs, and look at each other through the mirror. Finally, the most exciting moment has arrived: new video time! Woohoo!!! So we gallop downstairs with Cyprus close at our heels and watch the amazing Dora and Diego rescue the animals in the jungle, being sure to help them along the way on their journey. After two episodes the attention starts to wander and Kyle’s eyes are heavy, so I decide it’s time for night-nights. They both go down beautifully and magically and are now sleeping quietly and hopefully dreaming about their great adventures with Dora and Diego and the wolf pups! I could do this nanny thing as a full-time job for sure. These boys are just perfect in every way! Probably because they live within one of the most amazing families I’ve ever met. I love you all with all my heart! ~Alex

From Our Adoption Journal: Two Years Ago Today

I remember writing this two years ago. I was in my pajamas, sitting on the beige couch underneath the sky-light-windows in our living room. I remember that I woke up and didn't even want coffee. I remember that when I was writing in the journal I was so knotted up with anxiety that I was chilled to the bone and my hand was shaking as I tried to hold the pen steady to write on the page. I remember that after I finished writing I was reading a book about Haiti (a book that I had read cover-to-cover several times already). I remember that Braydon came downstairs, and we curled up together under a blanket, holding hands. There was little to say. We were weary. And our nerves were frayed from eight months of waiting for our boys.

My journal entry from January 27, 2005:

"It is 5:30a.m. I've been awake since 4:00. This is unusual -- usually (in these past 8 months) I've been up from about 1:30-4:30a.m. Today, though, is different... today is the birthparent interview. I wonder how they feel today, if they slept last night. I wonder if me, Braydon, the birthmother and birthfather are connected in some way -- were we all restless in our sleep last night? Were they focused on the babies last night -- as we were? Or were their restless nights the nights before Kyle and Owen were born? --While ours are after? Or, perhaps, very possibly, they are not concerned with all this-- maybe their disconnect from the babies is strong enough that they don't lie awake in the night restless nor cling to each other for strength -- as we do.

The idea that we might get the phone call to go get the babies tomorrow is more than I can handle! The excitement is almost overwhelming. But I'm also scared the DHS will call for DNA and then we'll be waiting another 3 weeks.

Oh my gosh! I can hardly write. My mind is spinning -- What if we can go on Friday? After 8 months of waiting the idea of getting the twins seems like a surreal, hazy, half-awake half-asleep dream. Maybe because I've been thinking of it, imagining each moment, every detail, for the past 8 months straight -- often lying awake in my bed at night.

Last night we went and bought all the last mintue stuff -- diapers, formula, etc. Then we went for a fabulous dinner at 3 West. We have had the most incredible, intense adoption journey. If this year has been any indicator of what's to come then our life is going to be the most fabulous, multi-faceted, intense adventure journey imaginable. My husband is the most amazing man I know. Our marriage is strong. Our boys are special. Our life is life-affirming. This adoption is the best thing we could have ever done. All the highs, all the lows, the hot sweaty days this summer, the frigid snowy days now... all of it is just so deeply life-affirming.

My bambinos are in an orphanage in Haiti right now. They don't know what is coming. We are their legal parents -- and they've never even met us. I hope that some day our boys will be able to comprehend this thing we've done -- this adoption. I hope they will have some understanding of how incredibly special their lives are. I hope they will know our love is deep, intense, and life affirming.

Right now I just cannot wait to meet them and get on with our life together."

Kyle & Owen Two Years Ago, in the orphanage

Photos of the Day