Adoption 101

Spend time teaching your newly adopted kids. It is all to easy to get caught up in the caretaking aspect, and forget the mommy aspect of knowing what makes your kids tick. What they really enjoy, and what they don't.

You need to spend time becoming their mom which means that you are on the floor figuring out what is going on inside their mind and how to get in there. You deserve to know your child better than their therapist, their teachers, their Doctors or specialists, their paras, and so on.

It will take time, and lots of trial and error... but to really feel like and be "mom" you have to be fully committed, fully involved, fully engaged, and then when your 8 year old daughter with Down syndr, who came home not knowing anything but how to survive, touches her nose in response to your question "Where is your nose?" for the first time you will be over the moon happy! You will KNOW that you are beginning to figure her out and that you are her mom because there just isn't anyone as giddy about it as you are in that moment!

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And just for fun, here is a pic of my girls, Riley 18, Quincy 11, Yana 8, and Tavi 5.