This is us, Siana and Edgar.
We’ve been together a long time, married 10 years and together for -mumble mumble – more years than that. Needless to say we know each other well, have a good time together and are ready for some kids. We’ve been on a journey to figure out how to form our family and after a few routes, have landed on the road to adopting from Mexico. How did we get here you may ask? Faulty GPS? Bad Google Map directions? It’s true, adopting from Mexico is not the international adoption hotspot. But it’s where our collective heart resides and where we expect to find our little hearts out there waiting for us. Allow us to explain.
Edgar comes from a big Mexican family and although born in the United States, returned with his family to Mexico when he was five years old and lived there until he was nine with his parents, sister and brother. He came back to the U.S. at nine, not speaking a word of English and made his way into bilingualism with flying colors, or should we say colores. He went to college, went to graduate school and now works in public radio. He met Siana in college and their love of all things theatrical, (they met in the theatre) repetitive, (they love to quote the same five movies over and over again) and cultural (they pretty much love traveling anywhere) brought them to where they are now.
Siana comes from a mixed family of Mexican-American (her mom) and Anglo (her dad) heritage. She likes to describe her upbringing as Quesadillas and English Breakfast Tea. She’s got her feet firmly planted in both cultures and likes it that way, which is why she vows to never leave Southern California. She’s spent a lot of time trying to learn Spanish, studying in Oaxaca, Mexico and Granada, Spain and sometimes she’s good at it and sometimes well, we can’t all be perfect now can we? Siana’s a fundraiser by profession and a creative writer by night and on the weekends. She also writes a blog about screenwriting with her friend called Two Girls on a Bench. Siana thinks Edgar is pretty cool and is looking forward to doing a lot of paperwork with him.
And this is our dog Angel.
She has been with us for 9 years and we think she’s around 10ish. We got her from a shelter, so her age is a little hazy, but she likes it that way, she tends to be a little coy. Angel is a lot of fun and we do our best to give her the life she deserves – which she would tell you should include filet mignon on a regular basis. Angel has been known to re-decorate our home, Edgar has affectionately nick named her Martha Stewart due to her interiour design efforts which include scratching up door frames and throwing her kibble around the kitchen.
So now that you know about us, you’re probably still wondering why we chose Mexico. There is only one adoption agency in the whole U.S. that processes Mexico adoptions at the moment and we found it, yea us! Mexico recently became part of the Hague convention which means the country complies with some pretty good international standards. Sadly Mexico has never been a popular place to adopt from, as the children available are usually 4 years and older. For us, after considering infant adoption for a while, we decided we were probably ready for older kids and settled on Mexico as we’re most familiar with it, feel comfortable both culturally and language-wise and even have relatives in Mexico that we can crash with during our many visits. Mexico just feels like our other home. And with as many variables as there are in international adoption, we figured knowing the country we’re adopting from and understanding it’s idiosyncrasies would make it a little easier for us.