My husband of 13 years and I are living in a tiny cottage on a strawberry farm in South Africa. We don’t have a phone, TV, AC, or microwave, and until March we didn’t even have a stove, but we are loving life. My husband is getting his PhD in ancient languages and I am writing, writing, writing. We have children on the way. Two little citizens of the world are coming to us from strange and unexpected places. Raising them in a foreign culture (for a time) with hardly two hands to rub together will be an exciting challenge. It will also be the experience of a life-time for all of us (including our adopted dogs, should they prove to have longterm memories).

After never having been outside the United States before, my husband and I decided to pack our dogs and move to South Africa. It was a terrifying and spectacular journey. We sold all we owned and headed towards an unknown world. My husband is now getting his PhD in ancient languages and I am sitting in a tiny shack on a strawberry farm, loving on the dogs and working on a new novel.

But this is the story of our kids and it really begins in the airport in DC. There was a family waiting to board the plane with us. A white middle-aged couple (the man clad in his safari best) stood with their six kids, all dressed in soft, pastel cottons. The oldest three were African girls with stunning skin, hair and smiles. They were wide-eyed with the wonder of traveling across the world, perhaps for the first time in memory. There were two six year old boys, one black and one white. They held hands throughout the airport, looking sharp in their matching plaid shirts and flip-flops. The youngest was a white girl, perhaps four years old. They were all so well behaved, despite their excitement. One of the girls leaned on her father’s elbow. He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. What a brilliant family this was! By the time we got on the plane, I was in love. I told my husband, “I want a polka-dotted family just like that one.” After 13 years of marriage and no success in the offspring-creating department, we didn’t know how we would get the white polka-dot, but we had long since decided to pursue the black one. The need for adoptive parents in South Africa is frightening. But like any official process in Africa, adoption is slow to happen.

Now, as we wait for our baby Xhosa son, I find myself pregnant for the first time at 34. More than ever before, I am excited about the opportunity/challenge of raising an African child. We are blessed to live in this country, to experience such an intense culture, and to be able to share it with both of our kids, no matter their color. What a gift for both of them to be born with the promise of a wider world view. In the months to come my husband and I will feel the full weight of this responsibility. How will the locals accept a white couple with a black child? How can we nurture a permanent sense of ethnic identity in both our children? Will they share a cultural affinity even though they are different colors? We know we cannot be ready for many things, including the obstacles we will face, but we enter this time with a sense of duty and gratitude and joy.

My husband’s job takes him away for long stretches and we have tried to work it out to join him when we can. As a result, we’ve traveled with our kids from the time they were born. Even though I’m thrilled to show them the world, it’s not always been easy or graceful. Lugging a sleeping 40 lb kid on the rush hour Tokyo subway is is not exactly my idea of a good time, but it is an experience to remember. Nonetheless, it’s been really important for us to expose our kids to different cultures, foods, and ways people live. (And quite frankly to wean them off mac-n-cheese and TV!)

One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that the best times are usually the ones that are very impromptu. As I prepared for our first big trip, a summer in France with the kids, I started to mentally make a list of the incredible towns, museums and places I had seen in college. The ones that I thought would be meaningful and important for my kids to see. My husband sat me down and gave me some wise advice, “Listen,” he said, “if you get a lemonade and sit in the park all day together, that’s a good day. Let them soak it in. Be slow.” I have to say, like in our everyday life as parents, I’ve come to realize that the most important and memorable moments are the quiet ones, the unplanned ones. So the picture you see is of my daughter, Ava and I. We were walking, exploring really, on the road outside the house we had rented in the south of France and came upon this incredible field of poppies. It was poppy season and they were all in bloom, in another few days they would be cut and sold in the market and the field would be almost barren. She’s older now, but we both vividly remember how it felt, smelled, the feeling of the wind and how relaxed and joyful we were. In that moment, we were so deeply connected and the world seemed really small…just her and I.

Even after two years of parenting this crazy set of children, I still feel surprised when someone remarks how alike they are. It is true, mind you – my two boys resemble each other greatly and my oldest son and my daughter have a lot of the same mannerisms. They actually match up rather well. Like kid versions of Garanimals. The “tiger” shirt and the “bear” pants are not too matchy-matchy, but they “go” all the same. My kids “go”.

And this is odd. Because, my children have biologically NOTHING that is truly “the same” about them, except that they all have this odd, coffee loving, loud, crazy mom and a rather sane, albeit exhausted father.

You see, two years ago, this little family of three consisted of myself, my husband, and a very precocious five-year-old boy named Eli. Eli is a fantastic mixture of everything my husband and I love and hate about ourselves. He was a boring addition to our family, to hear him tell it. Plain ol’ pregnancy. Plain ol’ delivery. (As the mother who WENT through this plain ol’ delivery, I beg to differ. Twelve hours of labor, an emergency c-section, and the immediate shock that the 75 lbs gained was ACTUALLY FAT and not baby…nothing plain about that!)

But two years ago, we decided to rock this little boat a bit. We decided to adopt a little girl and a little boy from Russia. They were actually from two different regions in Russia, so it took four trips to complete this.

For my daughter, we went to Siberia for Thanksgiving. Now, before you start thinking that this was a culinary move, let me save you from booking the Turkey Trip 2009. We went there on a mission – to meet this little girl that was bald and really very angry. I mean, angry in a way that only a girl can muster. Dismissively angry. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

Siberia in November is exactly as you think it is. It made Michigan look tropical. Folks from North Dakota can kiss my southern hiney with their snowfall amounts. Don’t even get me STARTED on the wimps who inhabit Wisconsin. Siberia is cold. Bone chilling cold. Sun never goes down and it is still cold COLD. And yet, the “locals” (locos?) wear stiletto heels, and walk very fast – on ice, no less. Color me impressed.

The flight into Moscow was long, but uneventful. I spent much of it trying to decide what we would name this surly child I had only seen a picture of. After 11 hours of discussing it with me, my husband basically didn’t care if I named her Delta Airlines, so I was left to hammer it out alone. The two days in Moscow was a blur of exhaustion and site seeing. The impression I left Moscow with was a sense of pride for them – simply because of THEIR pride. Did that make sense? They were so proud of what they had, whether it was something truly great or something that I thought paled in comparison to “what we have at home” – that I was proud for them. America could learn from this pride, I think. And I am from the South – where Pride is tattooed/etched/flown on a flag in most places. For me to say this…that is SOMETHING.

Another plane ride (the time change is so extreme from Moscow to Siberia that you actually end up losing almost an entire day for a four hour plane ride)…and you are in Siberia. I actually thought I would see Mikhail Barishnikov and Isabella Rosselini hovered in the corner of the dilapidated airport, huddled in conversation. At least Gregory Hines tap dancing in the alleyway? No?

The airport was…empty, aside from the passengers from our plane. The plane pulled away, as if it were a bus station, and the passengers started walking across the tarmac – towards what, I have no idea. It was a vast land of…vastness. Is this even a word? Even today, I still remember the unbelievable sense of melancholy and loneliness of that airport. To think that people used to be banished to live there…if that airport was what they had to greet them – banishment was surely the worst punishment ever. One big, hairy, cold, empty Time Out. But again, I am getting off track.

I would love to have remembered more details about the region in Siberia we were visiting. I am sure it is a lovely land, with lovely people, especially for the four whole days it thaws out. However, if you are an adoptive parent, you know that most of your mind, heart and memories center around what your new child was like at that time. And how they change into a member of your family that you cannot remember the time before them. Except that you had missed them.

I remember the big cement building, painted seaside-ish colors of pink, yellow and blue. This was a stark contrast to the surrounding buildings painted…um…concrete color. But I appreciated the effort to make it look fun, as if it were a big, 24 hour preschool. I remember that my daughter had a big bonnet on her head that she hated. I remember that she hurled it across the room. I remember that she was bald, but had a slew of polka dots on her head. I later found out this was chicken pox, but it made for a fun first memory. Do not think for a second that her prom date is NOT going to see those pictures. I remember that she was very irked with us. I suspect that we interrupted her daily watching of her soap opera, or her manicure. Or she might have needed coffee. Even at almost two, she used to steal my coffee back then and take a big drink and set the mug down HARD – as if to let us know that she was plum WORN OUT by us and could USE A LATTE.

The following March, my husband and I traveled back to Siberia to bring our daughter, Finley home. That was two years ago. She still hates dresses and combing her hair. She recently has started playing with a doll, who she insists is a boy. She spends most of her time trying to convince The Boy Doll how to play baseball. And for Heaven’s sake, to make a good latte.

She is loud. She is very messy. She has a laugh that will make you want to hear it again and again. She has perpetually dirty feet. She STILL steals my coffee.

She is not from me, but she is…me.

She just “goes.”