a balancing act.

last week, i wrote about having to balance our life between two cultures. (thank you for your honest thoughts on that, b.t.dubs.)

my friend, joanna, brought up another important idea that we'll have to juggle. with most international adoptions, it is obvious to outsiders that the child is adopted. this can sometimes result in yucky conversations (like the one my friend, christine, had to deal with) with ignorant and rude people. {big hugs to all my friends that have had to deal with this downright ugliness.} but here's the thing...with us, it's not going to be apparent that choi boy was brought into our family through the miracle of adoption.

for us, we're not going to be reminded of the fact that choi boy is not biologically related to us when we look in the mirror. when other strangers see us, they are going to assume that i was pregnant with choi boy because they'd have no reason to think otherwise.

i feel like this is a blessing and, for lack of a better word, a curse. it's a blessing because we won't have to deal with those ugly conversations and ignorant strangers asking us how much our baby cost, etc. but on the other hand, it's a curse because it will be easy for us to forget.

in fact, in korea, some adoptive families thrive on this being able to forget. i read somewhere that there are a variety of prosthetic baby bumps that prospective adoptive mothers can buy so they can fake a pregnancy and then pass off their adopted child as their biological one. so sad. so very sad.

but *we* don't want to forget. we are so blessed to have adoption be huge part of our family story. and we are so grateful for the international adoption process that connected us to our son and allowed us to build our family.

so here's where the balancing act comes in...how do we acknowledge our adoption and help choi boy know and understand how grateful we are to this process while not going overboard and constantly drawing attention to it?

what do we say when someone says, "wow, he looks just like you!" or "i can see that he gets his dashingly handsome looks from his dad!" (hardy har har) do we say, "thank you" and move on, or do we take the time to correct and explain their error?

what would you say? how would you handle this?