spain dad, a baby blog

Athens

2009-07-06T11:23:00.000+02:00

I set down my knife and fork and turned around in my chair to watch Alleke and the handful of other kids who had come with their parents to dine at this restaurant, which amounted to a few checkerboard tables in the corner of an empty square at the end of one of the tiny streets that ran back and forth up the side of the mountain to the Acropolis, where the Parthenon sat perched like a crown over the city.

The kids were infinitely more excited about the empty square in which they could run around freely and the cat that they had found sleeping under one of the tables. I watched for a while as they huddled around the table and giggled as the cat batted his paws at a piece of straw one of the little girls had found.

Eventually we returned to the conversation April and I were having with my parents about how they had noticed that a lot of tourists were taking pictures of Alleke, sometimes even when we weren't aware of it. They had seen this a number of times since they were usually walking behind us.

"Do you want strangers taking pictures of your daughter?" my mom asked.

I looked at April and shrugged. "I don't know," I said.

When Alleke was younger, I didn't mind when people took pictures of her. I liked it, actually, because it meant people thought she was cute, and so did I. Alleke was growing up fast, however, and lately she had become more self conscious. She was shy when she met new people. She would come running over and hide behind my leg or beg me to pick her up so she could hide her face in my chest.

She was old enough to know that it's not normal for strangers to take pictures of her.

"How do you think Alleke feels about strangers taking pictures of her?" my mom asked.

I glanced over my shoulder to see where Alleke was. I couldn't find her at first until I noticed an over-weight woman in a sun hat at the far end of the square lifting Alleke onto a stone bench. I watched as the women took out her camera, asked Alleke to smile, and took her picture.

"Alleke, Alleke" April called, "Kelly, go get her."

I bolted out of my chair, and by the time I reached Alleke I had already frightened the woman so badly she was hurrying down the street and around the corner, holding onto her sun hat with one hand and dragging her husband behind her with the other.

Still enraged, I grabbed Alleke by the arm and marched off towards to our table. Alleke broke free and stopped. Just before she turned her back to me and crossed her arms, I saw the tears streaming down her face.

"Why did daddy do that?" Alleke asked, sniffling.

I just stood there for a while, not sure what to say. I had over-reacted, there was no question about that, and instead of protecting Alleke from an unwanted situation, I had put her in one, making her feel like she had done something wrong and embarrassing her.

I sighed. "I thought you didn't want that woman to take your picture," I said.

For more, take a look at our photos from Greece...

Paradise

2009-06-30T08:58:00.000+02:00

The woman in front of us was holding her sleeping daughter in her arms. Her husband was in front of her pulling their luggage and pushing a stroller with a sleeping baby through the herd of backpackers and the men picketing with their signs for hotels and cars for hire and wine tours and excursions to the top of the volcano.

I was relieved when the family pointed at the sign with the name of our hotel written on it and pushed their way over to talk to the man with the sign. I was relieved because I could follow them through this mess of people, and as the woman glanced behind and smiled at Alleke riding on my back, to know that we had something in common in this strange place, which after eight hours on a ferry boat, seemed so clearly separated from any other place I had ever been.

We piled into a van, and I slid the window open as far as it could go so that we could feel the warm breeze from the Mediterranean on our faces as we darted up the side of the cliff like a gecko on a wall to the village above.

I watched the hotel owner show the family to their room down the hall before we disappeared into ours. I threw our suitcases on the bed, opened them, and already April was in the bathroom putting our things away and asking if I would run down to the store and buy some water since we couldn't drink the water on the island, and she would put Alleke in her swimming suit and take her down to the swimming pool since Alleke had been singing ballads about her "hotel with a swimming pool" for days.

Later I pushed open the gate to the swimming pool with a gyro sandwich in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. I sat down on one of the lawn chairs next to the pool and ate my sandwich and drank a beer while I watched April making tractor noises and dragging Alleke around in circles in her inflatable pool ring.

The woman who had ridden in the van with us stepped out of the hotel room at the end of the pool. She was in her swimming suit. She walked to the edge of the pool and dove in. Her husband appeared with a towel over his shoulder. He left the door to their hotel room open, tossed his towel on a chair, and dove in after her.

I watched him glide across the bottom of the pool, his body lurking silently below the water as he came up under his wife. She began shrieking with laughter and splashing around as he grabbed at her heels, until eventually he came up for air, gasping for breath and shouting victory.

They could have been 7th-graders, even more convincingly for the way she grabbed him then around the neck and kissed him. I envied them for being young--not in years, but in spirit--defiant of the truth that they were busy parents worn out by two little kids at the end of a long family vacation. They made it look so easy.

I envied them even more that evening as we sat at an expensive restaurant at the edge of the sea as the sun went down, and Alleke shivered in her chair and cried, and we fretted over her until our food was cold.

As we waited for the bill, I watched the waiter wisk past us balancing plates all the way up both arms. I wondered why it was never easy for me to balance being a dad and a husband at the same time. I didn't like knowing that romance could come so easily for other couples with kids. They could just arrive at a hotel, dump their kids on the bed, leave their responsibilities hanging on the chair at the edge of the pool with their towels, walk to the edge of paradise together, and dive in.

Flamenco

2009-06-22T09:24:00.000+02:00

Alleke got her first flamenco lesson in Plaza Mayor while we were walking home from the ice cream shop.

Watch Flamenco on Vimeo.

Natural Childbirth in Madrid, an interview

2009-06-12T00:52:00.000+02:00

For those who are curious about what it's like to give birth in Spain, I got to sit down with April this afternoon and interview her about her second pregnancy and how she's gone about choosing a birthing center in Madrid.

This interview is also available to listen to as a podcast.

Kelly (Spain Dad): In terms of having a natural childbirth in Madrid, what are you looking for in a birthing center? What are your priorities in order of importance?

April: What's most important to me is a birthing center's approach to childbirth and pregnancy. I'm looking for an approach that assumes giving birth is something women can do naturally, instead of a sickness that needs to be cured. The task of the staff at the birthing center then is to do whatever they can to make it possible for the woman who is giving birth to have a say over what is happening. For me what that looks like is being able to move around while I'm having contractions if that's what I need to do. I don't want to be tied down to a bed because I'm being monitored. I want the least amount of unnecessary procedures, like not having to be hooked up to an IV or a monitor if things are going well or lots of other procedures that I don't want to go into right now, but that are fairly invasive and are not necessary in the process of having a child because it's not an illness, it's a natural process. If I want to lay in the bed, I'll lay in the bed. If I need to pace up and down, I'll pace up and down. If I need to lean over, I'll lean over. I want to be able to do what my body is telling me to do. For me, that's a first priority.

Another priority for me is having options for dealing with pain. Often the options are either an epidural or nothing. I would like more options since I know they're out there.

I'm also looking for a medical staff that's supportive and encouraging instead of demanding or authoritarian.

Kelly: Based on this list of priorities you mentioned, what natural childbirth options have you found in Madrid?

April: So far I've found three options. One is doing a home birth with a midwife. Another option is a group called Nacentia with a doctor called Regina Cardenas. It's like a birth center, but their births actually happen at a small clinic nearby called Clínica Milagrosa. The third option is Hospital Quirón with Dr. José Ángel Espinosa.

Kelly: The home birth is obviously different than the other two options, so can you give me just a quick summary of the last two, Nacentia and Hospital Quirón, and what makes them different from each other?

April: Both of them were started, I think, within the last two or three years by doctors who decided that they wanted to give women more freedom in the way they approach birth. From what I've read, the biggest difference between the two is that Nacentia really prioritizes natural birth, while Quirón really prioritizes women having choices. So, women might choose natural birth, but they might choose not to have a natural birth as well. My guess is the support structures at these two places are different if they're coming from different approaches. But, it seems like at Quirón as well as at Nacentia there is quite a bit of flexibility.

Kelly: I'm curious where you looked for these natural birthing centers in Madrid, and if for example there's someone else that's researching childbirth options in Madrid with a different set of priorities in mind, what's a good way of finding out which options are out there?

April: The main place, or I should say the only place I found information was on the Internet. So, keep that in mind. There is a website and forum called Crianza Natural where I've found a lot of information on natural parenting in general like using cloth diapers and breastfeeding and stuff like that. They have information on their website about natural childbirth in Spain. There's another website called El Parto Es Nuestro, which is an advocacy group for women being in charge of birth instead of doctors. And then there's Nacer en Casa, which is a website specifically focused on home births. So, between these three sites, I was able to find the information I was looking for.

Kelly: Okay, so interfacing your priorities with these three natural childbirth options in Madrid, how did you go about deciding which one to pursue?

April: Actually, I decided which one to pursue not so much because of the priorities I mentioned but because of other factors, like which one took our insurance, how close it was to our house, and that sort of thing. From what I understand about how the birth will go, all three options matched my priorities equally well, so my final decision was based on other criteria.

Kelly: Can you talk a little more about how the distance from your home and health insurance helped you decide which birthing center to choose?

April: For a home birth, as far as I know, there's not any private insurance company or public health care program that would cover the cost for a home birth. One of my friends who had a home birth in Seville told me the cost for them was around 2000€ for everything, including all the appointments through the pregnancy, the birth, and follow-up.

Nacentia is a private clinic, so they work with most of the private insurance companies. Our private insurance is Sanitas. It covers most of the appointments, but it doesn't cover the actual birth. There are two options for paying with Sanitas depending on which insurance plan you have. There's a reimbursement option called Sanitas Mundi or there's the option where you have to get permission from Sanitas ahead of time, which they call Sanitas Multi. If you have the reimbursement option, it covers up to 80 percent of the cost of the birth. If you don't have the reimbursement option, the birth costs about 2,500€ beyond what Sanitas will cover. I do know that a lot of the insurance companies pay for the whole thing at Nacentia.

At Quirón they also work with most of the major insurance companies. The pregnancy and birth are covered, so there wouldn't be additional costs.

As far as distance from home, I think that depends on how you give birth. I've given birth before, and it went really fast. Being 45 min. away from a hospital is not really an option for me. We'd have to deliver the baby in the car on the way to the hospital. So, having our birth center close by is going to be important to us, which is why a home birth or Nacentia, which is about a 20 minute walk from our house, rose to the top because they were closer.

It's also worth keeping in mind that when you have to go for appointments towards the end of your pregnancy, possibly every week depending on what's happening, it sounds very time consuming to have to travel 45 min. both ways for all those doctor's appointments.

Between Nacentia and a home birth, we haven't decided for sure what we're going to do because we haven't had the chance to actually talk to a midwife and find out more details about what kind of follow-up care there is after a home birth, so that meant that for right now, Nacentia made the most sense.

Kelly: At this point, what would it take for you to choose a home birth over going to Nacentia?

April: The main question is finding out what happens if something goes wrong. Because home births are not very common in Spain, how does the transition go from having problems at home to checking in at the hospital?

My second question is what happens after the birth? What kind of follow-up care does the midwife provide? If you're at the hospital, someone checks up on you and brings you food. Obviously, I don't expect a midwife to cook for me for three days, but I'd like to know what kind of follow-up care to expect from her.

Kelly: We're going to take some time to zero in on the childbirth option that we've decided to pursue, which is the Nacentia birth center in Madrid. You've had your first checkup at 14 weeks into your pregnancy, and you also had an ultrasound at that checkup. How was your experience at Nacentia. Any first impressions?

April: Overall, the checkup went very well. The receptionist and the doctor were both extremely friendly. The receptionist was helpful and welcoming and made us feel like we had a right to all the information we wanted. Sometimes in medical settings in Spain it feels like people have the information you want, but aren't comfortable with or used to giving that information to you. They're not used to being asked questions.

Something else that surprised me about our first pregnancy in Spain, and something that I've even experienced in other medical situations in Spain is that doctors tend to be pretty hands-off. Rather that using physical touch to determine health, they use machines or tests. I'm not exactly sure if my first appointment at Nacentia was a normal since I was so late in making the appointment. They kind of squeezed me in before lunch. The reason it didn't seem normal to me was because they didn't check my blood pressure, weigh me, or measure my stomach. So, even though Nacentia is a clinic that advocates for and approaches pregnancy from more of a natural perspective, there were still things about the appointment that were more medicalized than I think you would even find in general practices in other places. Nacentia is still a part of the general medical environment here where they'll do an ultrasound or another test instead of using physical touch to determine the health of the baby. Those were my first impressions. I'm looking forward to going back, so that's a good thing.

Kelly: I have one last question. You're not from Spain, and I'm wondering how being a foreigner plays into your experience of having a baby in Spain. Does the language or a fear of another medical system or anything else stand out to you as you think about giving birth here?

April: The hardest thing is finding the right information. The fact that there are these natural childbirth websites that I mentioned and the friendships you can make through these websites is what's probably going to help you find information much more quickly than other ways you might go about doing it.

It is hard when you have information from your home country, and you know how things work there. The realization that you're going to have to give birth differently than you imagined is a hard adjustment. I had to make this adjustment in my first pregnancy. Finding someone who is sympathetic and willing to listen and help you process through this is important. The key is trying to look for the positive things. For example, the first time I was pregnant in Spain when it looked like we were probably going to have a really medicalized birth, the positive thing that I tried to keep in mind was that Spain's infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world. So, as traumatic as a birth might be, the end, we were probably going to have a healthy baby, whereas there are other countries in the world where that's not necessarily going to be true. The challenge is trying to maintain a positive perspective in the midst of it all, and I don't know, believing that the options you want might be out there if you're willing to look for them. Almost anywhere you are you'll find a small alternative community that can help you.

Being Berber

2009-06-07T21:59:00.000+02:00

Our friend Chris sings and plays piano for a band called Being Berber in Madrid. He was eating lunch at our house on Saturday when April asked:

"Alleke wants to know why you have hair on your face."

Chris grinned at Alleke, then scratched his soul patch in thought.

"Musicians have hair on their face so they look cool," he said with a shrug.

April turned and interpreted this for Alleke. "Chris has hair on his face because he plays piano."

Amy Swacina School of Dance

2009-06-05T21:27:00.000+02:00

Alleke is a proud graduate of the Amy Swacina School of Dance in Madrid.

In other words, we leave Alleke with Amy (our ballerina friend) while we go to Spanish class, and they twirl around together in her living room. Here are the results:

Watch Alleke dancing ballet on Vimeo.

Ultrasoon

2009-06-03T18:02:00.001+02:00

Apparently we're having the baby "ultra-sooner than we thought" since the ultrasound at our birthing center in Madrid today said we were 16 weeks along instead of 14 weeks. I'm all for getting this baby here as soon as possible. Patience is not my virtue.

Watch our 16 Week Ultrasound on Vimeo.

For more, read about my reaction to our first ultrasound...

Scared of the Dark

2009-06-01T13:05:00.001+02:00

I startled awake in the darkness, wrenched out a deep sleep. April bust into our bedroom shrieking my name.

"There was a man in our apartment. Go after him," April screamed as she pushed me towards the door.

He's got Alleke, I thought, as I flung open the front door and took the stairs. He was at the front gate, shaking it, and trying to get out of the building when he saw me. He swore, then rattled the gate once more before leaping the stairs, pushing two laptop computers into my arms and shoving me back from where I had come, yelling, "Get out of here. I didn't do anything." I scrambled up the stairs and looked back only long enough to see the front gate wide open and two shadows slip away into the darkness. I ran back upstairs to get more information.

"Is Alleke here?" I asked April.

She nodded.

I set the laptops down and buried my face in my hands as my shoulders began to shake.

"I thought they took her," I said.

As irrational as my thoughts had been, for a moment I believed my daughter had been kidnapped and my life changed forever. My worst fear had become my reality—I had lost my child. I was haunted by this thought until the sun came up. Like little children, April and I were scared of the dark again and unable to sleep.

The policeman was right, of course, when he said, "It could have been much worse." In the end, everything is the same as it was before, except that now we carry with us the experience of having had a man climb into our apartment through the window and leave out the front door with some of our things.

We've learned something too. Well, first of all, we need to keep the shutters down at night, and secondly, that Alleke is our most prized possession. The events of last night are still playing in my head, and every time I get to the part where the man hands me the laptops, I'm relieved. Not to have the laptops back, but because I realized then that he was only interested in taking my possessions, not hurting my family.

A Time for Everything

2009-05-29T15:00:00.002+02:00

"Why is she crying?" Josie asked.

I sat down on the couch next to Alleke and lifted her into my arms. "Because Alleke has to say goodbye to her cousins, and she's not going to see them for a very long time. Not until Christmas."

Alleke screeched again like tires skidding through an intersection, then she lunged at me and clawed at my face. Josie and the other cousins cowered next to the coffee table, looking at each other, not sure what to do.

"Alleke's crying because she's sad," I explained, tears coming to my eyes. "She's going to miss you."

It was not easy to get Alleke to put her sandles on before we left. I didn't even try with her coat. "I hate goodbyes," my sister said as she gave me a hug. By the time we got to the car and I lowered Alleke into her carseat, she lay there like a lifeless corpse, having given up her fight, while I fed her arms through the straps and buckeled her in.

The ride back to Papa and Grandma's house was quiet, and I thought about how miserable we all were about having to leave our family at the end of the week. Alleke had been high maintenance for days, and April and I had all but given up on parenting. We were in survival mode until we got back to Madrid.

A wise man once said, "There's a time for everything," and this week was the time for giving Alleke whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, no questions asked. After all, that's what I'm expecting from everyone else until we were gone.

Nail Salon

2009-05-28T03:32:00.006+02:00

It might be a few years before Alleke opens her nail salon to the public. In the meantime, her grandmas and aunts are giving her lots of practice.

Two Years

2009-05-27T05:55:00.004+02:00

I've created a photo set from Alleke's second year, including new photos of her putting mascara on Grandma, gardening with Grandpa, making a snowman, feeding the homeless, wearing 3D glasses at the IMAX, and running around a castle. Alleke's a busy little two-year-old!

Watch this slideshow in fullscreen.

Optical Illusion

2009-05-21T20:04:00.000+02:00

The midwife shook the bottle, turned it upside down, and drew a circle of blue gel on April's belly. She rolled over the ultrasound machine, which was nothing more than a laptop on a cart with a holster on the side for the probe, which she untangled and rolled over April's stomach like a miniature vacuum cleaner.

The image on the screen looked like weather patterns, and then suddenly, there was a baby, moving in and out of the darkness as we tried to shine our flashlight on him.

The first time I saw a baby in April's belly, which was three years ago, I didn't feel anything at all. I remember mostly trying to figure out what exactly I was looking at.

Today, however, I was moved. Anyone who says an ultrasound is cute has an active imagination. An ultrasound is not darling, it's alien, like a satellite image from outer space. But, like all optical illusions, parents who know better see more than what's on the screen. At least I did. I saw my child for the first time, alive and healthy, yawning and stretching, tumbling around and peeking at me from inside his little cave.

It makes a difference that I've been a dad before because now my imagination is going wild thinking about all the things I know I'll get to do with this little person in the months ahead.

For more, see our ultrasounds photos or have fun with some optical illusions...

Wii Fit

2009-05-19T21:29:00.009+02:00

I sat on the couch with a pen in my hand. I was supposed to be editing my book proposal, but instead I was watching April stand on a Wii balance board.

The balance board is an accessory for Nintendo's Wii video game system, and it's a white slab that looks like a household weight scale. The board itself is a sensor that keeps track of your progress while you exercise.

April was standing on the board and pointing the Wii remote at the TV to set up her profile so that she could begin her exercise routine. The board measured her weight first, then her center of gravity, and finally calculated her body mass index. The number popped up on the screen.

"Hey, we have the same body mass index," I said, trying to be optimistic since April's pregnant and beginning to show.

April grinned at me over her shoulder.

"Yeah, but I'm pregnant," she said. "What's your excuse."

Tulip Festival

2009-05-17T04:56:00.003+02:00

Alleke would like to show you her wooden shoes and how to scrub the streets before the parade...

Wooden Shoes

2009-05-16T16:07:00.001+02:00

What's cuter than little kids in Dutch costumes and wooden shoes?

Watch this slideshow fullscreen.

Pregnancy Test

2009-05-15T00:00:00.001+02:00

Watch Pregnancy Test on Vimeo.

Cerrado por obras

2009-04-02T17:00:00.000+02:00

"Cerrado por obras" means "Closed for construction" in English. I won't be blogging for the next six weeks so that I can focus my efforts on finishing up my book proposal, which is the book based on this blog. I will be on Twitter in the meantime, so feel free to follow my updates:

http://twitter.com/kellycrull or in the left-hand sidebar of this blog.

I've got a surprise waiting for you all when I get back. So, make sure to stop by on Friday, May 15th. Trust me, it will be worth it.

If you would like me to send you an email reminder, you can leave me your email address in the email subscription box to the right (in the sidebar).

All the best to your family!

Economy of Generosity

2009-03-20T09:48:00.000+01:00

Taking Alleke to the market is like imagining a world without money, where the only real currency is friendship.

The market is a two-story brick building with probably fifty stalls inside where individual vendors sell fresh fruits and vegetables and meats, or in the case of our friend Antonio, cheeses.

Antonio is an old bachelor with glasses and a giant smile, and although we talked recently of the crisis and how these winter months are always the most difficult for business, he still insists that Alleke take her pick from any of his cheeses behind the glass case. He takes pleasure in cutting her a slice of cheese, which gets bigger each time and now takes her days to finish. This morning Alleke picked out a delicious goat cheese. We're still nibbling away at it.

At the fruit stand, Justo peeled Alleke a banana. At the olive stand, of course Alleke got an olive, and a gentle reminder to watch out for the pit inside.

We stopped by the bakery on our way home, and by the time I had parked the stroller inside, Pablo had Alleke in his arms and was asking her if he could make her a ham sandwich. I appreciated his healthy suggestion, but had already anticipated Alleke pointing at the chocolate Kinder eggs behind the counter. I watched as Pablo sat Alleke down at one of the bar stools, disappeared behind the counter, and grabbed a Kinder egg for her. He even served the egg with a glass of water, which if you've lived in Spain, you will know is not something waiters are easily convinced to do.

Call me ignorant, but I thought the point of business was to make money, but at our local market, friendship appears to be the priority.

Actually, I suppose this kind of generous economy works in the end. Not only have I become friends with Antonio, Justo, Pablo and the olive guy because of their generosity, I've become their loyal customer too. And you know what, friendships outlast difficult times, even during an economic crisis.

Dead Goldfish

2009-03-10T23:09:00.001+01:00

365.164 - Smile! by dyanna.

I stood there with my arms crossed and stared at the goldfish that had sunk to the bottom of the fish tank, shipwrecked among the pebbles, and all silvery like a coin dropped in a well.

I always thought goldfish floated to the top when they died.

Maybe not right away—which actually would buy me more time to consider how to explain to Alleke that her goldfish was dead without her noticing.

I put off telling Alleke about her goldfish until she was in her pajamas. It was now or never, so I sat her on my knee and pointed at the fish.

"Goldfish is dead," I said, knowing Alleke wouldn't understand what the word meant, but offering it to her like a sand bucket to be filled. We would scoop it full of meaning. So, I tried to explain death, and nothing seemed to work until I told Alleke that it was time to say "bye bye" to her goldfish. The sand dropped in the bucket.

Alleke slid off my knee, but didn't walk over to the fish tank. She stayed close and peered curiously at the fish. She frowned as I scooped up the fish with a slotted spoon from the kitchen and shoveled him into an empty allergy medicine box.

I pulled on my jacket, and after I let myself out of the apartment, I heard Alleke begin to cry. I walked down the steps and dumped the box in the trash can sitting on the curb in front of our building.

Back upstairs in our apartment, I took off my coat again and listened as April finished explaining to Alleke that Pepe, our remaining goldfish, was sad he had lost his friend.

"Was Goldfish your friend too?" April asked, holding Alleke on her lap.

Alleke nodded.

"Are you sad that you lost your friend Goldfish?" April asked.

Alleke thought for a moment. Then her face lit up.

"I want goldfish crackers," she said, referring to her favorite fish-shaped cheddar crackers that she had stashed in the cupboard in the kitchen.

April sighed and crossed her arms.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to make her cry," she said.

For more, watch the video of Alleke getting Goldfish for her birthday...

Hide and Seek

2009-02-24T10:00:00.008+01:00

I'm not exactly clear on Alleke's rules for the game, but we had fun anyway...

Watch Hide and Seek on Vimeo.

Seven Days

2009-02-21T11:48:00.000+01:00

Calendar by tillwe.

Thursday: 1st Interview with social worker
I'm a sensitive guy, and I left the interview wondering why everyone was being so mean to us. I just wanted one person to acknowledge that doing an adoption in Spain was a lot of hard work for us, and obviously we wanted an adopted child enough to go through this process, even though we were capable of having our own children biologically. It's not like I wanted a medal, but still it seemed like our perseverance should have counted for something.

Friday: Foreign Policy article
It was still nagging me that the social worker had said there are more families waiting to adopt than actual young, healthy children available for adoption. I had never heard this before. Was she right? April asked on a forum, and the discussion led us to an article in Foreign Policy called "The Lie We Love," which confirmed that there were indeed more families than children. Questions crowded my mind. Was there still a need for us to adopt? Was it unfair for us to adopt a child when others could not have children biologically?

Saturday: Adoption homework
I sat in a café trying to get down on paper why I wanted to adopt a child from another country. I needed something to hand in to the psychologist by next Tuesday, but I was confused. Everyone seemed to be telling me now that "helping a child by giving him a family" was not a good enough reason for adopting a child. I was told the right answer was simply "because we want to be parents." That answer made sense if we couldn't have our own children, but because we could, I was looking for another answer—the reason to justify why we wanted to have an adopted child instead of a biological one. I wrote down lots of things, but they were just different ways of saying the same thing: I wanted to "help a child by giving him a family." I was so mixed up, I thought about stealing April's answers. I wasn't even sure why we had decided to have Alleke. It just felt right at the time.

Sunday: Skype with parents
The social worker had also asked what my parents thought of our adoption. I realized I had never asked them directly, even though they have lots of second-hand experience with adopted children at the grade school where they teach. When I asked, they said they had been aware that there were more families waiting to adopt than young, healthy children available for adoption. I wondered why they hadn't told me this before. Maybe they had been telling me all along, and I hadn't been willing to listen until now? They also pointed out that we have a lot going on right now. I'm writing a book, we will be launching a new church soon, and we have our ever-present endeavor to learn Spanish and integrate into Spanish society. We're not exactly a stable family, even though we try our best. My dad said that if he had to do everything I do, he would pack up his bags and take the next flight home. I wished I had asked for their opinion earlier.

Monday: Family huddle
April and I finally found time to talk on Monday evening, and she told me about "waiting children." Let me be very clear that there are in fact children who are waiting to be adopted from nearly every country in the world. However, these waiting children are either older than say 5 or 6 years old, or they have a disability. If we really wanted to adopt a child who was waiting for a family to care for him, would we be willing to either wait to adopt an older child later, or consider more carefully if we had enough resources to care for a child with a disability in a country that is not our own?

Tuesday: Postpone home study
By this point we had more questions than answers. With much soul-searching, at least we knew we still wanted to adopt, but even in our best attempts at making sense of the new information we had been given, we still weren't sure what was the best way to go about doing the adoption. We were about to make one of our most important decisions as a family, and it was obvious we needed at least one more week to make our decision. So, we made some phone calls and postponed our home study one week.

Wednesday: Meeting with IMMF lawyer
Finally, some answers. We met with a government adoption lawyer. He helped us narrow our options down to Peru and Colombia. He told us the wait time was not one year, not two years, not even three years. We would have to wait a minimum of four years to adopt a child from these countries. The wait time seemed to be getting longer the more we learned. "It's going to be difficult for you," he said, "because you are required to adopt a child younger than your daughter."

Thursday: We sign the papers to stop our home study for now
We have decided that it makes more sense to try to get pregnant for now, and to adopt later. This gives us more time to make a better decision about how to adopt. We can decide if we feel it is ethical for us to wait in line to adopt a young, healthy child from another country when there are already so many waiting families who cannot have children of their own. We can decide if we feel prepared to adopt "waiting children" who are older or have a disability. We also discovered that we are unwilling to wait four years for Alleke to have a brother or sister, although we would be willing to wait as long as it takes for more children later, knowing at least that Alleke has a sibling.

Even though our process is on hold for now, I still hope and pray we will have the opportunity to adopt a child someday.

For the rest of our adoption story, take a look at our Guide to International Adoption in Spain...

9 to 5

2009-02-19T19:40:00.000+01:00

This afternoon I asked Alleke if she wanted to go down to the park to play.

She was sitting on the couch looking at a comic book.

"Sorry daddy," she said, "Alleke's working."

Adoption Interview

2009-02-17T08:34:00.001+01:00

The social worker greeted us with two kisses at the front door and showed us to her office. We sat down, folded our coats on our laps and watched as she shuffled through our paperwork before placing three pages on the desk in front of her. She studied the pages for a moment, then leaned back in her chair and smiled.

"Now, tell me, why do you want to adopt a child from another country?" she asked.

April and I looked at each other.

"Well," I said, starting in, "we know there are lots of kids that don't have families, and we are willing to be their family."

"Kelly, stop right there," the social worker said, and held up her hand.

She turned over one of the pages sitting in front of her and picked up a pen. She looked me in the eyes.

"We need to get a few things straight," she said.

She drew a large triangle in the middle of the page. Inside the triangle at the bottom she wrote in capital letters, EXTENDED FAMILY.

"Most children who cannot be cared for by their parents live with a close relative," she said.

She drew a line above EXTENDED FAMILY and above that line wrote down FOSTER CARE.

"In the rare case that a child is not able to live with a close relative, he is cared for by a foster family in his country."

She drew another line and wrote down CARE FACILITY.

"If a foster family cannot be found for the child, usually because he is an older child or has a disability that requires more attention than a foster family can provide, he is put in a care facility."

"As you can see," the social worker said, tapping her pen at the top of the triangle, "each category is much smaller than the one that came before it."

She drew another line and wrote down INDEPENDENT.

"A very small number of these children are simply old enough that they live on their own independently."

The social worker bent over the page and carefully filled in the tip of the triangle, not much bigger than the size of a fingernail. There wasn't enough room to write, so she drew an arrow and wrote the last category next to the triangle, INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION.

"According to the information you've given me already," the social worker said, looking down at the papers sitting in front of her, "you want to adopt a young, healthy child from another country."

"There are more families like you that want to adopt these children than there are children available for adoption."

The social worker set down her pen, looked at me, and waited.

I didn't say anything.

"Did you know that?" she asked.

I looked at April and shook my head.

For the rest of our adoption story, take a look at our Guide to International Adoption in Spain...

Alleke's Potty Training Video

2009-02-12T09:00:00.027+01:00

Who knows potty training better than a toddler herself? Learn from the expert!

Watch Alleke's 7-step potty training video, and you too can learn to go potty all by yourself!

A truly memorable experience awaits you...

Watch Alleke's Potty Training Video on Vimeo.

Alleke goes to school

2009-02-11T08:31:00.002+01:00

Ok, not really, but while Grandma and Papa were here, we took a day trip to the original "university town," Alcalá de Henares.

Built in 1499, this university campus looks slightly different than mine.