Feelings about adopting out of birth order.

When we decided that God would have us adopt we had never researched adoption or talked with others and didn't know that to some, adopting out of birth order is a big no no. I think God had us remain ignorant of it because the children he had for us didn't fit in our birth order as they should :). There are challenges to adopting children who have been raised in a children's home...even if they were loved and well cared for there. Our twins never had consistancy, they would love someone and then that person would leave and someone else would come. Their life involved adapting with different people and attaching to whoever would look at them.

I think our biggest problem with the birth order thing would be this: Our youngest, Nate, is like the baby of the family and still at 3 1/2 gets treated like the baby. The twins see this baby/mom relationship and I think they struggle with this...especially Joey. He will often ask me, "mom, how come I wasn't your baby? I want to be your baby." All I can do is hug him and tell him I love him and that I am glad he is mine now. That is our biggest challenge with adopting out of birth order.

Considering our twins were raised in a children's home for the first 5 years of their lives they are quite spoiled. I am always amazed here in Romania to find how spoiled even the poor kids are. I think part of the problem is when you have a children's home you want to give all you can to these kids including material possessions. The twins always expect us to buy them something when we are out in a store. We would love to buy them things but we don't always indulge in their desires. We don't want them to think just because they want something means they should receive it. Here is a funny story. We took a trip to Timisoara, took the kids out to eat and to play at the play place and Joey started complaining about wanting something else. We told him he needed to have a thankful heart and he came back with this: "oh, I am thankful, I'm thankful I have a family." It was difficult to continue reprimanding him after that!

They have been with us permanently for about 9 months. We have a lot of good days and some bad days. They have settled into family life nicely and are trying really hard to obey and follow the house rules. They are doing better at accepting no for an answer then they did in the beginning. We love them and look forward to them receiving our last name. Please pray that the adoption moves in a timely manner. We hope to be home for a furlough the fall/winter of 2011.