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Jennifer - posted on 09/10/2010

Hi there! I don't see any conversations here, so I'm going to try to get things started. : ) My name is Jennifer, and my husband Eric and I adopted our son Daniel from Guatemala in 2007/2008. Daniel was born March 30, 2007, but because of all the Hague craziness, we didn't bring him home until February 2008. (Considering all the families who still haven't brought their kids home, I feel lucky!)

We visited Danny in Guatemala 5 times, including our pick-up trip, which was a wonderful experience for us. Daniel loves looking at his baby pictures and hearing about our times in Guatemala. I look forward to taking him back some day and showing him places his dad and I visited, especially Lake Atitlan, which I just loved. We stayed in touch with his foster mom for awhile, but the last time I tried to send her pictures (last summer), they were returned and I was told she moved. : (

We are a Jewish family in Los Angeles, and i actually love being a multi-cultural family. I feel it's enriched our lives, although I am not so naive as to believe there won't also be challenges. Oddly enough, almost all the local families I know with Guate kids are also Jewish, including a friend I met while we were both on pick-up trips. So it's nice that Daniel has friends that have such as similar experience to him. We try to maintain those friendships so when the kids are older, they can be a support system to each other. Daniel went to a bilingual Jewish daycare, so is fairly fluent in Hebrew (which we are NOT). And I've always spoken (my very limited) Spanish to him at least a little bit every day, and had other fluent Spanish speakers talk to him, so he's learning that as well. He really likes it. He's starting a new preschool next week where they have a Spanish teacher come twice a week; I like that everyone will be learning Spanish, so he' s not being singled out. I'm grateful that we live in a place where there are lots of opportunities for taking part in Hispanic cultural events. We even attended Fiesta Hanukkah last year, celebrating the Hanukkah traditions of Latin American Jews, which was really cool. And there is an annual market/fair primarily for Guatemalans living in L.A., selling all kinds of Guate foods and other products, which I'm looking forward to going to. We've tried a couple Guatemalan restaurants, but I'll admit, Danny isn't too adventurous when it comes to the food; he usually just wants rice and tortillas. But I LOVE Guate food! I wish the restaurants were a little closer.

Daniel loves cars, trucks and trains; balls; painting; singing and dancing; playing at the park. He likes several TV shows. His current favorites are The Backyardigans, Sesame Street, and Dora the Explorer. He tries to tell knock-knock jokes, but doesn't really get how it's done. He still thinks he's hilarious! He's very verbal, and I love being able to have conversations with him and hear how his day was.

I work full-time designing and doing compliance work on company retirement plans (like 401k plans). I love music, especially The Beatles, and have seen Paul McCartney in concert 30+ times. I recently joined Facebook and have become addicted to it; I end up staying up way too late!

I would love to hear about your kids and adoption stories! Anyone else want to share?