Adoption Facts

Since adoption is near and dear to my heart I read some interesting facts today and decided to share them. According to "Pittsburgh Professional Magazine" November 2008

*1 in 4 adoptions in the US is international
*PA ranks third among the states in numbers of children adopted from other countries
*girls represent 64% of adopted children

Thanks to Craig for sharing this magazine with us. His son goes to the same pediatrician as we do and our doctor was featured in this article. Another interesting thing that she said was that 20% of the children she sees have no problems at all. That struck me because we are in that 20% and I am so thankful! Aside from Karla's little hospital stay (that I still have bad dreams about) she is healthy and developmentally on target. I'm not counting the fact that she is speaking English and Spanish. She's picking up more English everyday. In another article in this magazine that exclusively discusses language in internationally adopted children, it says that delayed language development is expected 100% of the time in these children (this was said by a speech-language pathologist at Washington Hospital in McMurray, PA). I'm not sure I completely agree with that because it all depends on the environment the child has been in.

As you all know, adoption and speech-language pathology are two of my big interests - so I decided to give you some info on both.

I want people to be aware of adoption and know that right now it is extremely difficult to adopt internationally and it makes me sad - for orphans and for parents in the U.S. that would happily adopt them. I think that there are only a few countries to adopt from right now and some of them (like China) take YEARS. It's not right for the babies/toddlers/children! Anyway, I'll stop writing about it and share some Karla with you. :)

Yesterday and today Karla said the following words (the speech therapist in me is coming out):
yummy
okie-dokie
love you - She has said this before to both her grandmas and her daddy, but never to me. She said it today - after some practice - I admit it. :)
banana
owl
dos (she will say this after you say "one" or "uno" and then she calls every number after dos - "dos"
bano (for bath)


What did we do today? Well, we folded towels:


And put the clean, folded towels in the laundry basket....wait, there are books in the laundry basket!! How'd that happen??