Now to tell the boys...

The time came to tell the boys of our decision, and hopefully, enthuse them about the prospect of adopting. We'd do it sensitively, gradually, bit by bit, I told myself. Instead, I sat down at the dinner table and blurted it right out. Chris grinned at the boys in the way one might after winning the lottery. "Adopt what?" Matthew the four year old asked. Thomas didn't say anything. We explained that as we already have two boys in the house, it would be fun to have a little girl. "A girl!" Matthew spluttered. Thomas, aged six and Alpha Child, announced that he'd rather have a puppy. "Yeah," Matthew said, "but you have to have a fence for a puppy!" We agreed that we'd need a fence for a puppy and I suggested that we might need some gates in the house for a baby girl.

"A baby," Thomas groaned, as though he was sucking a lemon. "You've got to be kidding me. Come on!" His eyes met mine with a wild kind of desperation and I said we're not kidding. Then I smiled because this could be going an awful lot worse.

"I like playing with kidth," Matthew conceded through his lisp. "But not girlth. Maria'th a girl as she'th adopted and she dwiveth me cwazy." Matthew adores his Russian adopted friend just two houses up from us. We explained a little about some children not have parents and living in orphanages. Matthew couldn't comprehend life without a Mommy and Daddy but said, "Well, maybe we could get a girl and a puppy dog."

"Okay," Thomas sighed, visibly shaken by the concept of not having parents and living in a noisy orphanage with lots of other kids running around. "I guess it would be good to adopt a little girl - but not a baby!" He quietly finished his meal while his 4 year old brother climbed all over me, wiping rice and beans on my clothes. "Oh, Mom," Thomas said, getting up to put his plate by the sink. "We need to ask Santa to bring another remote for the Wii."

"Why?" I asked, waiting for a story about what Matthew did wrong while Thomas tried to stop him, but couldn't because Matthew doesn't listen and he was bouncing around and standing on his toes like he shouldn't.

"For the girl," Thomas said.