The day we pulled up into our driveway with the first two of our children that we’d adopted — into the home that had been full of empty bedrooms for years while we waited for them — we sat with the keys in the ignition while they, buckled into boosters in the back, slept off days of sleepless travel and we sighed.
Done.
We’d finished the hardest part, hadn’t we? They were … home.
They transitioned almost seamlessly into our home, except for some minor hiccups with attachment that an ergo and night-time bottle feeding (eye-to-eye) seemed to cure.
My little girl smelled like me. (She was mine.) My son even looked like Nate, aside from his chocolate skin. They slept through the night and played for hours like best friends and made our family of four feel easy.
A year later and we were adopting again. Insta-family.
And somewhere between that cloudless day when we brought our first two home and the one when we had five packed into our rusty suburban, the seamless days of adoption had vaporized.
The days when it seemed easy were distant. {Continue reading over here … }
