A question many prospective parents early in the international adoption process ask is, "How can I be certain my child will not have any medical problems I can’t handle?"

The answer is: you can’t.

If your situation cannot accommodate a child with Special Needs and you’ve specified that ‘healthy’ is your choice, you may have managed to eliminate some obvious impairments.

Many parents in the process of adopting like to think of the referral photo as the adoption equivalent of the sonogram picture taken from the outside looking in on a baby in the womb. It will... more

When starting the process of international adoption, you learn early on that there are quite a few choices that are all yours to make. A very good source of questions and answers is right here on Adoption.com. Loading up on the info may overwhelm at first, but since you will eventually get to each and every concern, you might as well get as much as you can up front.

You can start by contemplating which ethnic group your child’s roots will grow from. If you have a preference, this can dictate which part of the world you’ll... more

I remember the first time I heard the word dossier used in terms of adoption. It conjured images of spy networks, ambassadorial portfolios and international intrigue.

"We have a whole dossier on you." "Are my eyes really brown?"

Okay, so I got over the whole ‘Casablanca’ thing pretty quickly.

Dossiers are a compilation of required documents regarding hopeful adoptive parents and come in many shapes and sizes -- all are roughly rectangular and range in length from ridiculously ponderous to seemingly endless. Entire forests (hopefully regenerated for the purpose) are sacrificed for originals, copies, copies of copies, notary statements that copies are copies... more

Today is Sam’s ‘Gotcha’ anniversary, or as we call it, his ‘Family Day’. It’s not so much a celebration as a day spent remembering and discussing. At three, Sam tends to be overwhelmed by big events (and any gift potential can muddy the waters considerably), so we’ve kept this small, intimate, if you will, as fits a day commemorating family closeness. The highlight is the time we go through his life book and I tell him the story of Sam.

‘Gotcha’ is a familiar term to all in the international adoption world. To many, it sounds a bit harsh on the tongue at the beginning of the process, but it soon becomes the light at the end of the tunnel, the flame our little moth-like mothering... more

Hammocks. How does the rest of the world get by without them? And how does anyone get a baby down for a nap if there’s no hammock on the veranda? When my granddaughter was born in North Carolina, I looked all over the Net for a hammock to send for her. The closest I found was a soft-sided bassinet suspended by springs from an aluminum frame. Nice, cozy, and very expensive and she’d grown out of it by the time she was 4 months old When we were in Cambodia in July of last year to bring Cj home I bought ten hammocks for twenty dollars. Three hang side by side... more

At one time reported as the newly discovered Garden of Eden, Seychelles is about as close to paradise as an island nation can be. The inner islands are made up of ancient granite, so old there are no fossils, vestiges of the ancient super-continent that eventually broke up to become Africa, Asia, Australia and beyond. These, the only mid-ocean granitic islands in the world, sit four degrees below the Equator. The outer islands – there are more than 100 islands all together making up the country – are coral atolls. The most famous, Aldabra, is a world heritage site, one of two in Seychelles.

The Indian Ocean surrounds us, and its pristine azure waters on many days are... more

I'm Sandra. I live on a small island in a big ocean with my husband, Mark, and our two kids, Sam and Cj. We are a ridiculously happy family that has come together from different parts of the world through serendipitous circumstance, luck and hard work.

I started out in California. Mark was born in England. Our kids, aged 3 and almost 10 months, are Cambodian-born.

I look forward to sharing thoughts, information, experiences and a few laughs with any along for the blog ride.

I'd like to post a photo of us all, but can't figure out how to do this yet. The word "glitch" has come up...at least I hope that's what she said!