On our way home from Thanksgiving with the Hagerty family last weekend, Sara and I stopped in to see the twin sister of one of our best friends (Mara Martin). Mindy(Mara’s sister) and Ian Noyes adopted two little ones from Ethiopia in July of this year, and we wanted to meet the kids, as well as pepper them with questions about their experience.
Here are the Noyeses. Er, the Noyes’s. (Does anybody know how to punctuate that? I’ve got an English degree, but that was mostly spent deconstructing words … not actually learning how to write the dern things. Dang those fancy colleges!)
Mindy, Ella, Isaac, Ian and Jacob Noyes
(from their website)
It’s funny… when Mindy and Ian adopted these kids back in the summer, I remember thinking, That’s neat. How noble. But I wasn’t really deeply touched by it.
Needless to say, I am now. (and as a side note: We get that response from friends a lot now: How noble and good of you to adopt! It’s weird to get that response. We don’t feel particularly noble–we are mostly just excited to be parents!)
Ella Dinknesh Noyes is a vivacious bundle of energy and sweetness.
Her brother, Isaac Eyob Noyes is likewise full of energy (of the boy variety), and he and I became quick buddies.
They’ve had an incredible experience with these two, and they gave us plenty of useful advice and play-by-play of their experience in Ethiopia, working with their agency, and what it’s been like to parent them. We’re learning about the competing schools of thought regarding how to integrate adoptive children into your family (“give lots of concessions because they’re adopted” vs. “hold them to the same expectation as biological children”). We feel more drawn to the second approach, but we’re admittedly pretty darn ignorant at this point! I guess that’s what prayer is for…
This will be a huge adjustment for us, obviously…not only are we taking classes, reading books, etc. about adoption, but we’re also learning about parenting AND Ethiopian culture–all at the same time! Our life is about to radically change (bye bye to quiet nights at home after work just reading!). But that’s part of why this has been so fun for us.
When we were with the Noyeseses, I was struck again by how foreign these kids were. I mean, they couldn’t be cuter… but there sure won’t be any hiding the fact that our daughters are adopted! We’re excited about that dynamic, but if you’re the praying type, we’d love for you to join with us to pray that our girls would feel so loved — that the fact that they come from a foreign culture (Ethiopia) wouldn’t hinder their sense of belonging. That’s always a challenge, in any adoption, and ours will be more difficult because of its transracial, transcultural aspect.
But I can’t stop thinking about these (yet-to-be-identified) girls as our daughters. I hope they will never, ever doubt that.
The kids are too cute!