For some reason, a few months ago, I got slightly obsessed with reading adoption blogs.
Oh, I know exactly how it happened. It was around Easter, and I was doing one of those “Catholics celebrating around the world” posts, and a GoogleBlog search turned up a post about, I think, Easter at a Catholic church in Ho Chi Minh City – and the blog was that of a couple in the process of adopting from Vietnam. (This was also around the time the Popcaks were in China adopting their daughter Liliana, so my interest was heightened). Well, many links later, I was just fascinated, following the journeys of loving parents reaching out across the world to adopt. Once you get started reading, it’s very hard to stop, since the process itself is, unfortunately, filled with tensions about getting referrals and travel dates and so on, and then, of course, there is the simple and profound joy expressed by parents meeting their children for the first time, and then, subsequently, settling into life as a family.

Yeah, you can have Two and Half Men. Real life is vastly more interesting. And sometimes heart-rending.
Well, here’s a new adoption blog to follow: Catholic author Kris Franklin and her husband are tired of the empty nest and want to fill it up again. They’ve started the process for adoption (domestic) and Kris is generously and graciously blogging about it here at Deja Vu Mommy.

Camping with kids is the best! Kids get excited about frogs and weird mushrooms and the fact that marshmallows are extremely flammable. Kids jump up and down! They yell HOORAY! They want to catch frogs every day, and burn marshmallows every night, because it is SO DARN GREAT TO BE ALIVE.
One of Marty’s cute quirks is that he loves to paddle our canoe among the lily pads in super-shallow water, so he can CATCH STUFF. By stuff, I mean frogs, toads, turtles, and the occasional snake. Here’s a photo of one of his prizes. It would have been nice to put that wiggly little frog into a pair of eager little hands. We let him go instead.

Yesterday I found a mushroom that looks like a soft-ball sized piece of squishy coral. I wished I had somebody little to show it to. I found a patch of puff-balls and had to stomp them all myself. Marty caught a brown snake with a pink belly. It bit him, but only hard enough to make him laugh. We wished we had someone to squeal with us at the sheer thrill of snakes.
The world is a wonderful place, full of surprises and discoveries and marvels. We don’t want to go camping alone. Not if we can help it.

Via Mark Shea, who is back blogging!