Many people have stopped by while we are out shopping and look at him and say,"Oh, he is so gorgeous." Ok, I know Jonah is cute and all and maybe I am just not a baby person but I never go up to people to tell them how cute their kids are, especially when I don't know them. I know people do that when tiny little babies are in a shopping cart. I may look and say, "Oh my gosh, he/she is so little. How old?" Well, Jonah is not an infant. So, now I assume that people are looking, wondering what the deal is, and wondering what's his story. So they just say, "Oh, he is gorgeous." Now, this does not bother me at all. I know Jonah does stick out just a little bit in our family of four. I see families all the time that are mixed raced and always wonder what the story is. It's human nature to be curious and we do not mind answering questions at all. Everyone knows that we are pretty much an open book.
But within the last two weeks, two very rude comments have been made. And yes, they bothered us. So here was the first one. I was at Panera ( no surprise there!) with Jonah in a stroller and there was a man in his 40's with his father. I heard his father talk to him and he was definitely from somewhere in Africa and had a very cool accent. They both kept looking at Jonah. The younger man came over and asked where Jonah was from. I told him Ethiopia. His next comment was, "So, did you use and agency?" This may sound strange to most of you but we have learned that there is a bad perception of adoptions happening in Ethiopia due to illegal activity going on and bad agencies not being ethical. It was a little rude more because I felt like he was questioning if we went about the adoption properly and legally but I understood. I told him we used Wide Horizons. WH is one of the biggest and most well known agencies and prides itself on it's ethics. ( I didn't tell him that part of it but I don't think he was looking for that anyway. He just wanted to see if we used an agency.) Again, I was fine with all this but then came the next question. "So, how much did he cost?" Yes, you read that right. At that moment I was shocked and actually didn't know how how to respond. I felt my face get red, like I was embarrassed for him for even asking such a thing! Ok, it's rude enough to ask how much we paid for the adoption, let alone phrase it as if Jonah was a thing we bought at a store. My response was, "The adoption cost a lot." I am not sure what the right answer is. I don't think there is one. Now after talking about it we have come up with other good responses. Some sarcastic of course! So the man said, "You guys did a nice thing." I said, "Thanks" and walked away.
A few things here....
1) It is nobody's business how much we paid for the adoption. Everybody knows adoption costs a lot of money. Then again, many people think it's priceless, the outcome is a child in your life. Does it really matter anyway?
2) If you are interested in adoption, then asking about costs is completely normal (at least for us, we don't care) Just for some education- the costs go towards lots of legal fees that we don't even see or know about because we had an agency do all the leg work for us. Again, that is some of the cost. You need a home study, fingerprints, state seals and then the cost of travel. There is a lot more that goes into it but that's an example.
3) We didn't pay for Jonah. We paid for the process to get him into our lives.
4) We don't look at Jonah as a charity case. We don't want him to ever feel that way either. We saw all the kids in Ethiopia, herding their cattle, with smiles on their faces and loving their life. They don't know any different and are very happy. We both felt sad leaving Ethiopia ( I was glad to get away from all the smells, don't get me wrong!) and taking Jonah away from his birth country. We both know Jonah could have lived just as happy a life there as he will here. I will say that the medical care we can provide for him here will allow him to live a healthy, long life, that he maybe would not have had in Ethiopia.
Kevin was talking to a lady that we know, hadn't seen in a long time, didn't know we were adopting and had just met Jonah. So, she asked a lot of questions about the adoption. (which we don't mind) After the questions, she then went on to say, "Well, there are a lot of kids here that need to be adopted." Maybe to someone else that wouldn't have been so offensive but to us, that is so rude and heartless. Are you telling me that only people in the US, should adopt kids from the US? To us a child is a child. If they need a home, they need a home and who cares where they are from. Kevin told me this on the way home in the car and I was pissed. I told him he should have said, "Well, why did you add one more child to our country when there are already so many that need a home, right here the US! Why don't you adopt a few then!" Instead he said we didn't want to financially support a birth mother while pregnant, to then change her mind after giving birth. The lady then said, "Yea, that happened to a friend of ours." Kevin then said, "Well, then there you go." In the end the lady really believed that we should have adopted from the US and that's fine, I guess.
Ok, a few more things....
1) Everybody has their own beliefs and can obviously say what they want. Just don't say them to us!
2) Kevin and I obviously don't believe that people should not have their own biological children and should adopt. We have JT. We chose adoption for our own reasons and know that adoption is not for everybody.
3) There are many reasons we chose to not adopt domestically, not just the one above. Both domestic and international adoption has their challenges, not one is better than the other.
4) If you are wondering why we chose international adoption or specifically Ethiopia, just ask. Don't tell us though that there are kids here in the US that need homes too. We know this!
5)Just some facts. Over one-third of Americans have talked about adoption or even considered it, but only two percent have actually gone through the process and completed it.
We knew we would run into this kind of stuff and we don't pretend like it doesn't bothers us. It does, but really just a little. I plan that this will be the only post about this. This was for the some of you who have asked us.
We love Jonah just like we love JT (and Mia of course!) (and Zeus for Kevin, I know poor Tzeli) We do both find it strange that as soon as we were on the plane with Jonah, we felt like he was ours. Right away we felt this. This feeling sometimes takes months for adoptive parents to feel and that is completely normal. Jonah was just ours. He didn't grow in my stomach for nine months, we didn't get to hear his heartbeat for the first time, we didn't get sonogram pictures of him, but I also didn't get stretch marks, didn't have to through labor and didn't have to gain 35 pounds. See there is a plus side to everything! JT loves Jonah to death. He laughs with him, hugs and kisses him and pushes him and steals his toys as any good brother does! Jonah is ours just as JT is ours. He just came to us in a different but special way!
