From time to time since I took over this blog in January, I have seen stories around the Internet of families who found, and adopted, the biological siblings of the first children they adopted from Russia. You might remember that, back in May, I alerted you to a re-broadcast of the Dateline NBC piece about Lisa and Hythem Salem. The couple adopted two Russian siblings, only to discover that there were four more siblings still back in Russia. They went back and brought all four back to their home in Pennsylvania.

But a story in an Ohio newspaper yesterday may have the Salem's story beat. The Dueck family of Zanesville adopted a five-year-old girl from Russia in 2005. And when she finally mustered up enough English, she began asking them to also adopt her best friend, who was still back in Russia, a little girl who is now seven.

My older son was just 18 months old when I brought him home from Vladivostok in 1999, to young to have a concept of a world beyond himself. But my little guy had a definite buddy in Sakhalin, a remarkably articulate child his own age who generally did the talking for both of them. They were together all the time. As luck would have it, this little boy was also being adopted by an American family, and he and my son seemed to form an additional bond as they waited for all of us to come back for our court hearings.

When I thought my little guy had enough English to begin talking more about Sakhalin, I pulled out all the photos I had taken there and asked him about the other children, particularly Andrei. In the beginning, I would get smiles of recognition, and he would point to Andrei in the pictures. But when I showed my son the photos more recently, he seemed not to remember. Is the memory gone, or just packed away in the attic, the way his command of Russian seems to be? Maybe we'll find out if we get to visit Andrei's new family this coming spring.

The Dueck's meanwhile seem to have a very determined little girl on their hands. The story says they have helped her keep in touch with her friend over the past two years and that the other child was not legally available for adoption until this year. Are they going to go through with it? I'll let you read the original story to find out.

Image credit: ŠP.Winberg at Morguefile.com