Happy November, Happy National Adoption Month
November is national adoption month, which also includes the National Adoption Day on the 17th. My wife and I adopted three beautiful kids from South Korea and consider it to be the best decisions in our life. If you have ever considered adoption then this is a perfect time to start looking into it more. It is a long, and sometimes very difficult process, but hey, so is life too. Check out About.com's list of ideas on how to celebrate the month.
And hey - you get your fingerprints sent to INTERPOL - how cool is that???
Helping orphans in Iraq
I watched a pretty disturbing report last night on the state of orphans in Iraq. More information on the story may be found here:
The Orphan He Couldn't Leave Behind
The story details an American soldier who adopted an orphan from Iraq and is trying to help others. The state of the orphans there is incredibly bad. When my wife and I were adopting, one of the reasons we skipped over Russia was due to the state of the orphanages. What I saw on the news last night made Russia look like paradise. I would highly encourage folks to consider helping out as well. CBS has two links here:
How To Help The Baghdad Orphans
One link is just to hook you up with an agency trying to help the orphans while another link is specifically related to adoption.
November is National Adoption Month
Normally I'd post this over at my adoption blog, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew that November is National Adoption Month. The National Adoption Day is November 19th, and more information may be found here:
http://www.nationaladoptionday.org
New Blog: The Adoption News
As readers of this blog know, I've adopted three beautiful, wonderful, and of course perfect (ahem) children from South Korea. The adoption process is a wonderful, and trying process. I try to keep up to date on the latest adoption news even though our adoptions are complete (for now).
I haven't found a good resource to aggregate various adoption-related news items out there, so I figured, why not make my own. Check it out here at The Adoption News.
It is running BlogCFC and Galleon. Also the picture from purchased from iStockPhoto.com, which despire my earlier complaints, is a very nice and useful service.
Happy "Gotcha" Day
On a totally unrelated note - today is the 3rd anniversary of my daughter's "Gotcha" day. That's the day a child joins a family through adoption. Three years ago today a young, very small girl was placed in our arms... screaming. (And she is still loud - I can't wait till she is a teenager.)
Who's Your Daddy?
So, I hate it when folks in certain groups become whiny - always seeming to take offense at something that offends them when the context is not inflammatory or meant to offend. Sure, sometimes folks have legitimate concerns, but a lot of times I think folks just need to get over it.
I especially hate it when someone condemns a show/book/movie/etc without actually experiencing the media for itself.
That being said I'm going to turn into a big hypocrite and go against all of the above. Fox will soon be airing a new show called "Who's Your Daddy?" The idea is that an adopted woman will have to guess who her birth father is amongst a group of men. I just don't even know if I have the words to express how disgusting this is. As an adoptive father, I'm definitely biased, but I can't imagine this being a healthy way to talk about adoption. Of course, I'm not sure if this is worse than the movie Elf, where the main character is said to be going on a trip to find his "real" parents. (Yes, we only take care of them for 18 years or so - but we aren't the real parents.)
I'm happy to see, however, that at least one station won't be airing the show.