She's home!!!

[problematika]

Well, I didn't update for Bubla's megasurgery, I didn't update for all the adoption and biological sibling drama (that's private, anyway) or anything else that has made life highly, um, INteresting for the past couple of months

Comments

[ki]

this was such a great post to read. i'm confident that you, inka, and bubla will work everything into a comfortable routine that makes you all happy. congratulations!

[problematika]

thanks :-)

[foolfaerie420]

admitting to tears.

[lissande]

Yay! I've been waiting for your update. I'm doing a little Inka dance just for y'all. :)

[coyotesdaughter]

aw

this post makes me teary eyed.

- emily

p.s., how goes that email group for adopted romani?

[problematika]

Good question :-) Really should have gotten on that before I got a second kid...but thanks for the reminder...right now I'm so tired I can barely put a sentence together, but one day I'll have to put myself back together

[metachromatik]

enormous congratulations on your beautiful and growing family. i'm a friend of couri's and i'm sure you're extremely busy right now but i would be so very, very grateful if there are any resources you could point me to if you have a free couple of seconds at any point, as I am trying to adopt within the next few years, and would most want to, and feel most competent to, adopt a Romani child. I am a Romani woman and would be in all likelihood single-parenting in the US. thank you so very much in advance for any advice you could give.

[problematika]

Hi! Wonderful to hear that you want to adopt! Well, I'm not sure where to start. I guess it all depends on how much money you have and what kind of a child you think you'd be prepared to parent (age, health, handicap, deprivation). We had a very special situation in that legally both our kids will have been adopted domestically in the Czech Republic (it still wasn't totally free because we had to go through U.S. immigration and do homestudies, etc., but you can't compare that to the cost of any international adoption agency in the states). I'm definitely with you on the logic of adopting a Romani child when one is also Romani (and PLEASE stay in touch!!!). I insisted on this even when it looked like it was going to be impossible (we really didn't have 20 or 30K to shell out, and so the alternative would have been to birth a child and then probably adopt a waiting child in the U.S., Romani or not - I'm sure that in the end, raising a Black, Latino, or whichever-ethnicity child would have been wonderful, too

[metachromatik]

thank you so much for your response! this is a lot to think about. i always planned to adopt but the more i research adoption, the more daunting it becomes. i have a lot of qualms about transnational adoptions but i was feeling very hopeful about being able to provide a romani home for a romani child, and the stories i've been hearing about romani children being placed with white families in european to american adoptions where the parents have been clueless or misled about their children's histories and heritage have just been heartbreaking. i know i would cherish any child i adopted, and i would do my best to provide for the needs of a child from any ethnic background but...well, you know, having done it this way yourself... so far this entire process has been really overwhelming and i haven't even started actually looking at agencies or contacting the DCFS / DSS or doing a homestudy yet. i will keep researching, and you'll probably hear from me again.

[problematika]

Don't get discouraged. Our adoption story was so insane that sometimes I felt like giving up and getting pregnant at the earliest possible opportunity just to get the whole thing off my mind for a few years. But then I remembered that the hard or at least long and involved part is actually raising the kid, not doing the endless paperwork