There's a long thread on the forums now about whether you should take other children in your family along with you when you go to Russia to adopt. I'm going to answer this one in two parts, the first on why I decided not to, and the second on what I did to make my decision work for everybody.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that my second adoption from Russia did not go as smoothly as the first. I signed up for a one-trip region so that I would be away from my older child for as short a time as possible. Alas, after getting completely entangled in Russia's re-accreditation slowdown of 2004-2005, my one-trip region turned into a two-trip region.

Unlike Sue, the poster who started the discussion board thread, there was never any question in my mind that I would bring my older child along. It was going to be 18 hours of flying to the Russian Far East, and the longest trip he'd ever taken--apart from his own long flight to America, which he seems not to remember--was five hours. He was amply entertained on that flight, courtesy of mom and JetBlue. There is no seat-back entertainment on Aeroflot, and while my flights on it have been perfectly fine and safe, the movies have definitely not been PG. There were, at least, cartoons on the TransAero flight from Moscow to Yuzhno, and the stewardesses were very solicitous of the children on the flight.

I have shared photos of my older son's baby home with him. He knows that it was a simple place, and that there were many other children there. But there is a vast difference between a two-dimensional photo and an actual orphanage. He is a very compassionate child, and I felt it would be too hard for him, at seven, to see an orphanage and see how different life there is from the life he has now come to know.

Someday he will be ready for a trip back, and when he is, I will take him.