On my post, Contrasting "Juno" With My Own Domestic Infant Adoption Experience, Snafu Suz wrote the following comment:

As for the adoptive dad [in the movie “Juno” ], I think he got a bad rap in the movie. His wife accuses him of being immature and I don't think that was fair. He had a talent and passion for music and she discredits that by saying he wants to be Kurt Cobain. She basically runs the whole show and, as he says in one scene, his life is reduced to boxes in the basement. I felt sorry for his character when I think most people felt sorry for his wife. I think it's true that one person may drive adoption more than the other, but that's a bit different than steamrolling your spouse into doing something they really don't want to do. - Snafu Suz

I think her observations are accurate, but I would like to elaborate.

Waiting to adopt a child was a very difficult time in my life. It was hard enough going through over three years of failed attempts to become pregnant. At least during that time, I was doing something. While I was waiting to adopt a child, there was nothing to do except wait for the phone to ring. The wait was excruciating for me.

What made things even worse was that I felt as if I did not fit in anywhere. There was not even a Sunday School class for me at my church. Everything was set up according to stage of life. I was neither a newlywed nor a mother of a young child, so I had nowhere to go. (I do not think hub would have approved of my joining the class for singles!)

Most of my friends were either parents or newlyweds.

We are still seeing a bunch of new visitors who want to know about Myanmar children and Myanmar adoption. They are finding us via google.com. So this update is for the searchers and others who care.

LisaS reported in a recent post that children from Myanmar (formerly Burma) cannot be adopted. The UN is estimating that 100,000 Burmese may have died due to Cyclone Nargis and the aftermath. Or maybe the figure is 127,990 Myanmar dead and growing. And according to Aljazeera:

Mother’s Day rolled by, and although my mother doesn’t live near me, she is on my mind frequently.  Already well into her eighties and not particularly healthy, I’m aware that I don’t have a lot more time with her in my life. I’m not finding that an easy thought to cope with.

Now that I am blessed with a daughter of my own, I find myself re-examining my relationship with my mother - the good and the bad. I recall my mother making remarks like: “you have my body shape exactly, you gain weight in the same places I do,” and other reminders that I was doomed, according to her, to have her far less than perfect body.

One day this week while mulling over these thoughts, I realized how much I enjoy Ella for who she is and not for how much she reminds me of myself, or anyone else in the family. I have no idea how tall she’ll be nor what her body will look like as an adult, and I don't care as long as she is healthy.

If you want to start a firestorm, forget the matches. All you really need to get a spark is to say you are going to do something about child welfare.

Want proof? Since Lisa told you a few months back about how UNICEF's child welfare stance favors anything but adoption, her post has been read more than 600 times. UNICEF sees its work as benevolent; its critics, like Elizabeth Bartholet, the founder and director of Harvard Law School's Child Advocacy Program, see the opposite. Here's what she wrote in an article just published in the Georgia State University Law Review:

Opposition to international adoption cannot be justified based on any best interest of the child principle, despite the claims of many children’s rights organizations. Instead it is grounded in a group of commonly shared but deeply flawed ideas about children and the role of the state, and driven by adult agendas that are not truly informed by children’s interests.

I have spent this week writing about various forms of eating disorders that your traumatized adopted child might use to manage her painful emotions. I have also provided guidance for how to help your adopted child work through her issues. This blog entry provides more generalized advice that you can use to help any adopted child with an eating disorder.

1. Recognize that the eating disorder is a symptom of a deeper problem.

As long as you stay focused on the eating disorder, you are missing the bigger picture.

Color Splash Bath Fizzy Tablets asin: B00009KWUZ binding: Toy amazon price: $1.95 USD

Often times children whom have been neglected, or have other emotional issues stemming from past trauma, have a hard time with personal hygiene.  When my adopted stepson was much younger he had  terribly low self esteem, as well as very low self worth, so for him bathing and staying clean was not high on his priority list, not because he was a dirty child, but because he simply didn’t feel he was worth being clean.

No I am not talking about the actual stepparent adoption process, but the life of the family after the adoption of a stepchild.  All over the Internet, one will find support groups for adoptive parents, blogs for adoptive parents, and forums for adoptive parents, yet adoptive stepparents, although being involved in the most common form of adoption in the United States, are seemingly nowhere to be found.

Most often, when adoptive stepparents are seeking support, it is before the actual adoption.  They are seeking information as to how to go about performing a stepparent adoption, yet once the adoption is complete, rarely do those

The National Council For Adoption put out a press release yesterday announcing that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is helping it launch a campaign to recruit more foster parents in the United States. The program is called " Families For All" and Wal-Mart is supporting it with a $75,000 donation.

So, being the kind of person who likes to put numbers in context, I started looking for some context for that number.

Wal-Mart is, according to Forbes, the 16th-largest company in the world, with annual sales that last year topped $378 billion. Last year, the Wal-Mart Foundation gave $296 million to charities in the U.S. and says that Wal-Mart employees and customers contributed another $106 million. (The foundation has a program to match hours spent in volunteering with a contribution to the volunteer's charity.) That, plus Wal-Mart's international giving put its total philanthropy for 2007 at $470 million.