Follow the Bergeys as Mom Selina and youngest (China) daughter travel to China to bring home their newest, almost 14-year-old daughter. They’ve just met, and they’ve still got their week in Guangzhou to go. I couldn’t stop reading.

Branda at Days Made of Now has been home just one week with her 8-year-old daughter. Reading Selina’s posts, above, made me wonder how long her new teenager would continue mild and soft-spoken. Reading Branda reminds me that the answer is nearly always–not long! Adopting an older child (even just a little older) challenges us in ways we never imagined, although it’s nothing to the ways it challenges them.

Blogger Ann at We Are Grafted In has some beautiful things to say about that challenge in her post, Grief and the Adopted Child.

It’s not China-related, but all international adoptive parents should be pleased that Russia and the U.S. have finally signed a bilateral adoption agreement. You can find all the links to information about it one one of my favorite websites for family creation of all kinds, Creating a Family.

Finally, two long years of fearing that I’m harder on my adoptive daughter than I am on my biological children brought me—with the help of a compassionate nurse-practitioner, a swimming pool, and Rory herself—to the point when I finally know just why that’s only part of the story.