Re-Adoption

On Monday we re-adopted Little Man. It’s not what you think…

November being National Adoption Awareness month, a local adoption/foster-care/orphan-prevention non-profit organized a re-adoption ceremony and celebration before a judge who is a local champion of both international and domestic adoption (and whose joy in presiding over the hearing was evident, pun intended). An attorney– fellow adoptive mom who also finalized that day– graciously represented us and several other families, pro bono.

Adoptive families can “re-adopt” their children in their home-state, providing them a state-issued US birth certificate. With China, a Hague approved country, this step is entirely elective– not necessary to legitimize our adoption, our son’s citizenship, or standing in our family… but it could very well make his life easier as he gets older, creating a clean, “conventional” paper trail versus a hefty stack of foreign documents that might render a DMV employee or college admissions counselor stupified.

Being a familial matter, siblings were encouraged to participate. To this nerdy homeschool mom’s delight, our girls were sworn in and gave official testimonies before the courtroom. It was also a joy to witness the re-adoptions of two other family friends.

It was fun, special. Frankly, it’s always a blessing to have something significant to add to our son’s comparatively sparse baby book.

Recently I was asked, of adoption, “How much paperwork is it, really?” to which I could only laugh… a year and a half home and we are still completing paperwork. If it’s not a post-placement report, or a passport application, it’s something like this. It’s a lot. However, hear me when I saw that the blessings cannot be quantified and it is absolutely, unequivocally worth every bit of effort and paper.