A long time ago, I blogged about why we didn’t change the boys’ names (except to give them our last name, of course). BOY am I glad we didn’t.
After some run-around with U.S.C.I.S. (and some procrastination on my part), I have FINALLY acquired the boys’ official adoption paperwork, as submitted when we entered this country nearly five years ago.
And we thought we had photocopies of all the important stuff.
We didn’t.
Pushing past an initial brush-off from our nation’s immigration department, I filed again this past September, loading them up with all the past history of my attempts to acquire our sons’s original adoption paperwork.
And this time, it worked. And not only do we have pictures of them and of their other mama that we never had before, we now have the names of their maternal grandparents!
The boys were ecstatic! ”We have 3 grandmoms and 3 granddads!” (They have “known” for years that they have four sets… but the 3rd one just became more real because they have names!]
But the best news? One of them shares his first name and middle initial with their grandfather. We know why he has his name!
It’s something birth parents take for granted – the rationale behind a child’s name. And we were just able to give that to him this week. He’s seven.
We’re so far behind. But how grateful are we that we were given the good sense to keep their names?
Their names are their story. And we just got a little piece more of it this week.