This is how the Husband and I decided to adopt a kid:
The Husband and I were on a beach vacation with, our daughter, the Girl***. It had all the clichés of paradise: palm trees, silky coral sand, swimming-pool blue water lapping rhythmically against the shore, even dolphins. And we were trying to relax, read our books, do all those things you do on vacation before you have kids. Except our daughter, age 2.5 wouldn't let us. She kept running up to us every two seconds, to ask for help with sand-castle construction or fill up her bucket with water, to watch her pee in the ocean (such an illicit thrill for the newly pottie-trained) or simply to demand that we entertain her--the sole reason for our existence on earth, no? After trying to read the same paragraph in my book for the 38th time, I turned to Husband and said: "You know, if we don't have any more kids, we'll never get to read in peace on a beach vacation."
Now, reader, I had been trying to talk him into a second for some time now, but he remained as ambivalent about the idea of a sequel as he had been about the prequel, whom he had not been 100 percent sure he'd dig until the moment she exited my womb, at which point he had one of those storied instantaneous love-at-first-sight reactions. (Whereas I was too busy feeling relieved that the ring-of-fire had ended). Turns out, you threaten a man's beach time, he pays attention, because Husband said to me: "Okay. We'll adopt."
I should probably back up here:
We have been talking about adopting for as long as we've been talking about having kids, about 5 years. (Which, I will point out just this once, or five hundred times, was back in the day when Mia Farrow was the most famous international adoptive mama. I'm a big fan of the Angelina, but not enough so that I'd adopt just cuz it was a cool trend she started.) Initially, we thought we'd adopt internationally straight off the bat. From India. A girl. We even named our fantasy adopted kid: Isabel Jhumpha (what can I say? I loved the name Isabel before it became as ubiquitous as Starbucks--sorry Moms of Isabels but it's true--and Jhumpha Lahiri is such a wonderful writer--and a babe). We used to travel a lot and whenever we spotted a particularly adorable South Asian girl, we'd go "Look, it's little Isabel Jhumpa."
But then when the time came to have our first kid, we were too poor to pay for an adoption, and it made more sense to have the biological kids early on, while the machinery was less likely to malfunction. Then the Girl came, and she was a handful, and only after two years did we even begin to consider adding more chaos to our family stew.
So, when Husband said, "Okay, we'll adopt," it sealed the deal. We were back to the original plan. One home-made, one store bought. And so our adventure begins....
***For now, I'm doing this blog anonymously because I want to be honest--and, I hope, funny. I am somewhat paranoid that social workers soon to be evaluating my family may not appreciate my sense of humor because adoption is so often treated as this Solemn Event. Maybe as this moves forward and I feel more confident in the process, I'll out my family's identities. In the mean time, please bear with these annoying monikers.
