Older Child Adoption Story #4:


From the mother of a boy and girl, both adopted at 2:

We have two children who came to us from India.  Zachary is now 6 years old.  He came to us one month after his second birthday.  Rachel is now 4 years old.  She arrived three months after her second birthday.

They both have adapted and adjusted beautifully.  The family joke is that they moved right in and took over the house - we now rent from them. Seriously, they never went through any major adjustment period.  Who
knows, maybe we'll ALL be in therapy in ten years, but for now, things in our household couldn't be happier.

We made arrangements for both Zachary and Rachel to be escorted home.

As far as the bonding process goes, I had a slight advantage in that regard because both children were used to primarily woman caretakers.  Rachel especially seemed to shy away from men (unfortunately, including daddy)
for the first few weeks.  Once that initial shyness wore off (and now she doesn't have a shy bone left in her body!) she is very close to her daddy, grandfathers, uncles, etc.

Our orphanage was very good about providing us with pictures, updates and videos and we also sent pictures of us, our home, their new bedrooms along with care packages on a regular basis.  They even had pictures of my husband and I on the airplane and kept pointing to them saying "mommy, daddy" on the way home.  I really believe that all of that had animpact.

When we picked up Zachary, the escort set him down and I scooped him up and didn't let go until we were at the hotel and I needed to use the bathroom.  I tried to hand him to my sister (our family photographer and
Zachary's godmother) and he pulled back to me and yelled "Nay".  I have never felt such joy (and my poor sister has never been so crushed).

We decided to keep both of their Indian names as their middle names, so they are officially Zachary Mano and Rachel Ramani.  Mano is pronounced Manu and we decided it would be too difficult for him in school, etc.
We loved the name Ramani, but felt that we needed to be consistent so Zachary wouldn't ever feel that his Indian name "wasn't good enough".  We started calling them by their given names, then both names, then just their new first names over the first few days and both made the transition without a problem.

Initially, they both understood our English much more than we understood their speech.  They both had spent time with women who spoke English, so they were able to understand us.  We did quite a bit of pointing and
guessing for the first few weeks, but once they started talking, it was non-stop!  Especially our Rachel - she even talks in her sleep!


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