Adoptive Child Understanding Adoption

I remember laying on a beach on the Fourth of July in 2010.  Reid and I had just recently decided to adopt and we were sharing our hopes for the future.  Now if you have met my husband, he is the poster boy for "A Man of Few Words".

When I was searching for memes and saw this it was perfect because he sometimes starts a sentence and stops...like he used up all his words for the day...and...just...can't...anymore.  So when this man started sharing his dreams for our son and things we would do to win at parenting, (ya'll do realize you are competing against us, right) I was all ears.  He started telling me about how we would celebrate with our son about his adoption.  He came up with great ideas about having our son adopt something on his "Gotcha Day" so he could understand the concept and excitement of bringing something into our family.  Don't worry...we meant like a fish because our kid reminds me of this.

I was in love...any time that my husband strings more than 3 sentences together I get all hot and bothered.  I know everything about his job because I just love when he talks to me.  So we planned and dreamed and shortly after that our dreams came true.

So every year we celebrate with Mason.  We talk openly about traveling to Russia to get him because God told us he had the perfect little boy for us to go an get.  We celebrate and go out to eat and make Mason feel like the most special little boy of all time for being chosen into our family.  We talk about how his birth mother wanted him to have a mommy AND a daddy, that he knew God was going to bring somebody to come and get that precious little baby boy.

So here is where it gets difficult.  We did such a good job of celebrating being adopted that Mason now wonders why other families weren't formed the same way that we were.  When we went to our friends baby shower, Mason asked us who she was going to give her baby to?

SO...I kind of felt like that one went in the win column for adoption AND our parenting.  Apparently we make this look so good Mason thinks everyone should do it.  I explained to him apparently enough for him to understand...or more likely I stammered and talked so much that he got bored and wandered off rather than having to listen to my explanation.  I still to this day don't know if he understands what I was talking about.

Another conversation he had with me was about his birth mom.  He asked about her and I told him what I knew (and had to fill in a lot of holes based on our Russian social workers predictions about similar situations).  My sons following statement made my heart equally break, swell with pride, and realize his self esteem was solid.  When we talked about her not able to take care of him, so she left him with people who would find the perfect family to take care of him, his response was "Wow...she must have been so sad to leave me."  Cue the water works...and not the pretty ones.

"Yes she was baby!"

I am sure that we will have many more talks about this sweet boys adoption and definitely more Gotcha Day celebrations, but for now my boy seems to be pretty well adjusted in understanding this thing called adoption.  However, here is my apology if he asks you who you are giving your baby away to.