Do you ever feel like you want do something bigger than yourself, even just a little something? Send a few dollars to Nappies for Nork. Nork is a children’s home in Yerevan, one of the two children’s homes I visited during my trips to Armenia. Here’s more: Nappies for Nork Nork orphanage, located in Yerevan, […]
orphanage
Leaving one home to join another
Out the turquoise doors we passed, our daughter leaving one home to join another. Walk through these doors in the other direction and you enter Baby Bird’s first world, a children’s home, where she lived for the first year of her life, surrounded by the voices of nannies and other children just like her, children […]
Seeing our daughter again after five long months
I’ve never given birth, but I can imagine how desperately you long to meet your child after nine long months of pregnancy. However, while a pregnant mother-to-be has been with her child from the moment she was created, adoptive parents begin their relationship with their child many months later, even if they have the good […]
Through the blue gate
Two days after we became family in the eyes of the court, we went to take our daughter out of the orphanage. Other than a few weeks in the hospital as a newborn, this was the only home she’d ever had. The eight nannies who tended to her every need were the only “moms” she’d […]
Six months in a baby’s life
When we first met Baby Bird, in October 2011, she was a little baby: five-and-a-half months old and around 10 pounds. During our registration trip, we spent a week getting to know each other. Then we had to leave her behind. Over the next six months, while we waited for both the U.S. and Armenian […]
Going to Gyumri
It didn’t take very long to realize there’s something about hurtling down a patched and bumpy highway in a taxi, at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour, in the middle of rural Armenia, that lets you know you are really going somewhere. Because, in fact, we were. Side-by-side in the backseat of the cab, Big […]
All my worldly goods
The day we took Baby Bird from the orphanage in Gyumri, her home for eleven months, we brought the following with us: a long-sleeved onesie, cotton pants, cotton shirt, a sweater, one coat with a hood, cotton cap, socks and shoes. Her nannies dressed her and handed her to us. We took a few pictures […]
Return to sender
Newspapers, radio chat shows and the blogosphere have been abuzz for the past week or so with heated discussions of the recent “disrupted” adoption of a 7-year-old Russian boy, who was sent back to Moscow by his adopted mother. I confess I’ve been “glued to the screen” reading about what happened and the outpouring of […]