I can’t stress enough how much the use of sign language helped/is helping both of my girls. GlitterGirl took a while to get caught up on certain motor skills, and this delayed her speech. She only had about 10 signs that she used when she started talking at around a year and a half old. [...]

Six and seven year old girls should not have to deal with a period. They just should not. Many of our daughters are in the high risk group for early puberty. Children who undergo rapid “catch up” growth are much more likely to enter into puberty much too early. My own daughter’s weight increased by [...]

When our daughter came to us she came with three things: the clothes she was wearing, her birthday, and her name. That’s it. To my thinking, we couldn’t completely take her name from her. She has so little that comes from her life before her new family, we didn’t feel it was something we could [...]

There is an interesting article in the Boston Globe. It seems that they have noticed that the number of adoptions from China into Massachusetts has led to an overall decline of adoption in their state of about 6%. They are specifically looking at 2003 and 2004 numbers. We are told that in 2004 there were [...]

Am I the only one in tears last night at the end of Desperate Housewives? My emotions are just not cut out to have a child in my home for a period of time with the possibility of someone changing their mind. This was not the only reason we chose international adoption, but it was [...]

If your child is delayed (and there are good odds that she will be) then you’ll find yourself learning a lot of new vocabulary words in your search to figure out how to best help her catch up. Gross motor skills involve control of posture, rolling over, pushing things around, grabbing big things and moving [...]

Someone asked about how to figure out how much heritage to include. I think this is going to be a little different for every family. My biggest goals are to make my daughter feel good about who she is. All of her – her female’ness, her American’ness, her Chinese’ness, and anything else she wants to [...]

Bù in Mandarin Chinese mean “no”. It can also be used with a verb to show the negative tense. It is said in the falling tone – the way you talk if you are really frustrated. This means no playing Peek-a-Boo. When you say “BOO” the child will think you are saying “NO”. Maybe try [...]

Don’t do it. If you are adopting to “save a poor little orphan” then please send money to Half the Sky, or Love Without Boundaries instead. You will be able to help a lot more kids with a lot less money. And you won’t be toying with the life of a child in the process. [...]

Someone asked about whether this is worth it. We had an adoption specialist look at our daughter’s paperwork last time. We did it after we had already sent in our acceptance letter, and we did it mainly so we would know about any issues and be prepared for them. We won’t spend the money to [...]