Life, Day by Day

I rarely watch TV but the other day while waiting for dinner, I sat down with my son and daughter who was watching Kung Fu Panda 2 on HBO. Although I saw the original movie, this sequel for me is a much better one. The adoption part of the story appealed to me being an adoptive mother of 2 kids, my now 21 year old son and my 4 year old daughter.  Needless to say, I sat through till the end of the movie. 

I used to think that bringing up kids wasn't all that hard. My parents raised us their 3 children (1 girl and 2 boys), fairly and without biases. We all had the same privileges and got the same kind of punishment when we did wrong. I never felt any more special than my 2 brothers. But when I became a mother to a 3 month old baby boy in 1991, I realized that it was not easy at all and that parenting is the hardest job in the world where there is no retirement ever. And so when I took home a 5 month old baby girl (who was born severely premature) for Christmas in 2008, it was an act of faith and trust that this too is God's will for me and my family. You see, raising my son was a relatively fun task for me, maybe because as the eldest in my family and the oldest grandchild, I grew up looking out for my brothers and playing with my cousins, majority of whom were male. I have always been partial to boys, even as a child. I remember each time my mom became pregnant, I would al

There are many suggested methods on how to tell a child about his adoption.  Based on others and our own family experiences, it is a proven fact that not telling a child about his adoption brought about dire consequences for everyone involved especially if the truth is found out from people other than parents. In the case of my aunt, she found out when she was already 10 years old  from well-intentioned relatives who wanted to help her parents resolve her habitual lying when she got caught doing something she shouldn't, like playing hookey from school, for example. Needless to say that was the start of her years of rebellion.  I heard other "horror" stories so when the time comes, although I never really thought about it, I knew that I will tell my child the truth.  My turn came around the time when my son was around 4 years old when out of the blue while playing in my bed, he reached out to my stomach and said..."I came from here".  My initial reaction was to