Adoption- "The Last Hope You Have to be a Parent"

This blog post is going to veer off of the others a little. I feel the need to clear up some misunderstandings about adoption.

1. There are people out there for whom adoption is their FIRST choice for being parents *gasp*!

Paul and I, as far as we know, are both perfectly capable of conceiving a child with our DNA. However, a.) neither one of us wanted a baby. b.) We felt it wrong to bring a new child into the world when there are MILLIONS of orphans just waiting for a family to bring them home. c.) We felt strongly about adopting an LP child that so many other adopting parents would not even dream of adopting. p.s. Children with dwarfism are not mentally handicapped :) d.) The thought of pregnancy makes me ill.

2. We love our child as much as any child that would share our DNA.

a.)Our child may not share our genes, but she will share our love of music, books, sense of humor, thoughts, gestures, etc. b.) Your husband and bestie don't share your DNA, but you love them, right? c.) Yes, she is our REAL child.

3. Yes, the paperwork is a pain in the $#@@. However, I think every person thinking about being a parent should have to go through the same process.

It would cut down on the *idiots who reproduce over and over again.

*By idiots I mean the people who can not afford one child nor do they take care of this child, but continue to have five or six more! NOT the wonderful parents who have a big family and love and take care of their kids.

4. Yes, adoption is expensive, but there are grants, loans, tax breaks etc. that greatly help with the cost.

Not to mention it is totally worth it and none of your business how much it cost. :)

5. "Why didn't you adopt in America? There are children here who need homes."

LPs in other countries have ZERO chance of doing anything with their lives. After a certain age they are placed in mental institutions and live their lives there with no education or any hope of getting out. Also, there aren't any older LP children here. Mostly babies for adoption.

Hopefully, this educates a little more on adoption :)

Candace

Here we go again!!!...............

After a year and a half of settling in with Lizzy, we have decided to adopt again! Lizzy has brought us so much joy that we feel we have even more love to give another child. Again, we felt very strongly about adopting a child with dwarfism. Thanks to my friend, Amber, we are in the process of adopting a little boy from China. He is three and will be four in March. He also has achondroplasia dwarfism.

China's adoption process is a little different from Ukraine's. There is a lot more paperwork involved at the front end. However, we have already been pre-approved and China will actually "hold" our child for us as long as the paperwork goes OK. This means no big surprises when we get to China :) We will also only be in China for about two weeks. This is much better than the five weeks we were in Ukraine! Paul's mother, as well as Lizzy, will be making the trip with us this time. We are working on the mound of paperwork now and hope to travel to China in the fall of 2012. We can't wait to be a family of four!

Love,

Candace, Paul, and Lizzy