Omega Mom-haven't read the article but I will. We have good friends who adopted 2 children domestically through the same agency we worked with to adopt our daughter from China. I am actually responding to one of your recent posts re. Omegadottir's room. We got a catalog from Company Kids (www.companykids.com) I've never ordered from them but I saw an entire room with a pony theme-so a warning to you not to have the dottir near you if you check this out. If this link doesn't work type in "Pony Club" to the search on their homepage. Remember I warned you not to let the dottir see this. She will want EVERYTHING!
Our dd is having her 4th bday soon and she is having a My Little Pony theme-not because she is really into ponies but because her favorite underwear these days are her My Little Pony pants!

Here is the link to the pony room:
http://www.thecompanystore.com/parent.asp?product=cp36x&dept%5Fid=5001

Ahah! I haven't looked at the Pony Club stuff, but there's a Pretty Ponies quilt at companykids.com that I have bookmarked, and OmegaDad and I are planning to purchase same. Thanks! (On the other hand, maybe I shouldn't be thanking anyone for helping me feed my dotter's addiction...hmmm.) ;-)

Pretty Ponies quilt is the one we're looking at. There's also Pony Pals, and the Pony Club, and, and, and...

Boy, they saw us coming!

OK I'm back after reading the Salon article. Don't know about you OmegaMom but I know I tend to get annoyed by those people on the Big China Adoption List who go on and on about how they chose China because they didn't want the birth mother coming after them. Every time I look at my daughter's magnetic smile I feel a pang in my heart for her birth family who will most likely never meet her. I think of them EVERY SINGLE NIGHT as I fall asleep hoping that somehow they have a sense that she is happy and healthy. So I didn't look towards China as a way to avoid encounters with birth parents-yet in choosing China I feel free from the guilt that the author describes because by choosing China dh and I knew we would be matched to a child who was already in an orphanage and thus already in need of a family. I didn't feel I could choose a domestic adoption because I didn't want to feel as if my desire for a child might put pressure on an expectant mother to go through with an adoption and regret it later. In our daughter's situation the decision had already been made when she was 3 days old, long before we met her when she was 12.5 months old.

That said, as I mentioned earlier we have very good friends (we vacation with them every summer) who used the same agency as us to adopt each of their children through the domestic open adoption program and it has worked out wonderfully for them. Where they felt as though they might not be up to the task of adequately incorporating the birth culture of a child adopted transracially, as a teacher who also loves to travel I embraced the idea. While we have had to deal with issues related to the trauma of separating our daughter from her foster mama, they were blessed to be handed each of their children on the day they were born. I still find myself looking at dd's referral pictures-STILL on our fridge nearly 3 years later-longing to have been able to hold her when those pictures were taken at approx. 5 months.

Two different families-two different adoption paths-Two moms and dads (!) who feel extremely blessed to be able to parent the children we have been given. Last summer on vacation the two of us adoptive moms were again agreeing that at this point we feel grateful to have been infertile because otherwise we would never have known these amazing children we call our own.