Our family’s adoption story started before we were a family.  Fred and I hadn’t met yet and wouldn’t for 4 more years.  I was a college student with three younger living siblings and a younger brother who had died shortly after birth.  Still trying for that second boy, my parents decided to adopt.

Enter my youngest brother, born in Guatemala, united with our family at 7 months old.

nov 1999

I was 21 when he came home, so he doesn’t even remember the time when I lived in our parents house.  He vaguely remembers my first house and coming over for sleepovers when he was 3 and 4 years old. 

apr 2000 - with kim

He doesn’t remember a time when Fred wasn’t part of our lives, but he does know that he’s the one who gave him his nickname.  When Steven and Fred first met, Steven had never heard of the name ‘Fred,” but he knew Fred was my friend, a word he did know, so he assumed that was his name and called him “Fwend.” The nickname has stuck.

So when “Fwend” and I started talking marriage and family, we had this little 4 year old in our lives who was living proof that adoption was a great thing.  We didn’t love Steven any less or any differently than any of our other siblings, so we realized it didn’t matter to us whether our own kids were biological ones or not.  In fact, we thought, we’d like some of each – maybe two bio-kids and two kids by adoption.

After a year and a half of marriage, we switched the order and decided to adopt first, then have biological children.  We looked at all the options, and it came down to Guatemala and two other programs.  The choice from there was easy.  Why would we not give our kids and our kid-brother family members from the same country?

So we began our Guatemalan adoption in late 2005.  We brought the twins home in January of 2007, and just as I had hoped, my boys and my little brother are very good friends.  As it turns out, Steven and H & J are only 5 1/2 years apart in age – closer in age than Steven is to any of our siblings.  He’s enough older that the twins think he’s super cool and will do just about anything he says.  But he’s young enough that he still thinks they’re fun to play with.  Many a video game hour has been logged with the three of them sitting in a row on our couch.  It’s a beautiful thing, so normalizing for all three of them that they have the same story.

And so last year, when Fred and I found out we have a fertility issue that would make the “have two” portion of our family plan a real challenge, we needed only look at our photo album to know what to do.  Adoption has been in my family for 10 years and in Fred’s and mine the whole time we’ve been together.  So we’re adopting again, and again from Central America.  Turns out we have a thing for little Latinos.  :)

Looking forward, now, to when we have two more handsome or beautiful tan faces to add to this bunch.

tres guates