The Crazy Scale

We used to wonder if it was crazy to think about adopting two older kids from Peru. But compared to our current plan, that seems like nothin!

It was about two years ago that we started thinking seriously about trying to adopt some of the kids from the orphanage where we volunteered when we lived in Peru. We decided early on that we’d like to adopt more than one child. There are several reasons for this, one of which is to hopefully make the enormous life transition easier for the kids. For the past year and a half, we’ve had in mind to request two specific children—an 11-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. (Those are their current ages; obviously they were two years younger when we first met them.) 

Jose, the orphanage director, had told us about a family from the States who was planning to adopt another sibling set that we knew from that same orphanage—a boy who is now 12 and a girl who is also 15. We got in contact with the family and have exchanged several emails and phone calls over the past couple years. 

Several months ago, that family told us that they had made the excruciating decision to back out of the adoption process. They’d been at it for a few years and had run into many glitches. They asked us if we might consider adopting the boy and girl that they had been planning to adopt. When I first saw the email, my heart sank. Now we’re going to have to choose between these kids, I thought.  

My mom happened to be visiting at the time. (Let me pause here to say that my mom is the mother of seven children.) When I read the email aloud to her, she said, “Why not just adopt all four of them?” Hearty laughter ensued. 

But the idea grew on us—quickly on David, slowly on me. Two kids (two older kids!) already seemed more than a little crazy. But four?!

One day I was talking to my sister Rebecca about the dilemma and she pointed out in her pragmatic way that: 

“The gap between zero kids to two kids is pretty big on the crazy scale. But the gap between two kids and four kids is not really that big.”

Hm.

An image of The Crazy Scale embedded itself in my mind, accompanied by the soundtrack of my mom’s voice saying, “Why don’t you just adopt all four?” and my husband’s voice saying “Go big or go home!”

We got in contact with another couple in their 30s who adopted a sibling set of five all at once from Peru. And you know how that goes—as long as you can find someone crazier (or fatter, or dumber, or lazier, or whatever-er), you can manage to feel pretty good about your own situation. 

Then in November we had the opportunity to go back to Arequipa and stay in the orphanage for a week. (More on that in a future post.) Within just a day or two of being there, it was obvious to both David and I that we had to try to adopt all four.   

We aren't supposed to post photos of the specific children we're planning to adopt. The photos in this post are from the week we spent at the orphanage in November. Our future children may or may not appear in the photos. :)

We spoke with Jose, the orphanage director, about the idea of adopting all four kids, and he was 100% in favor of the idea. All four of them have been living at the orphanage for about six years and are some of the best kids there. The boys get along fantastically, and the girls, while not best of friends, don’t have a bad relationship with each other. All four of them have told Jose that they want to be adopted and have a family of their own. When we talked to Jose, we used language like, “We are considering…” and “We’ve been thinking about the possibility of…” By the end of the conversation, Jose was using language like, “When you adopt the four children…” 

So now we are scrambling to get the last of our paperwork in order to be sent to Peru. The adoption bureau wants to process everything before the girls turn 16 in May. Yes, that’s May 2014, as in, five months from now. So if all goes well (and that’s a big, huge, enormous IF), we hope to travel back to Peru in May or June to pick up our FOUR KIDS!!