How We Got Here

We're late to the blog party, but I think we're up and running. We are Shannon and Eric, the proud parents of two very dissimilar children Ethan and Cameron, and soon to add Jackzhen "Jack" (we'll post about him later).
We've been married since 2000 and live in a great little neighborhood called College Hill. The first addition to the family came in spring of 2005 and his name is Ethan. He's a great kid, quiet, pretty smart, funny, a little too obsessive, an aside from chronic ear infections and some colic early on, a very healthy boy. Hew was really an easy child and since we wanted to have a large family and didn't want to be in wheelchairs for high school graduation we started on #2.
Cam was a different story. At birth he was very bruised around the head and face. Initially we were told it was just from the cord being wrapped around his neck and would go away. Fortunately for us an overnight nurse looked at him and didn't feel right. The bruising didn't sit well so when a specialist just happened to be making rounds she brought him in. One look at Cam and the doctor rushed him into "special care". He had NAIT (neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia) and his blood platelet count was hovering around 13,000 (normal is 150,000 to 400,000). Cam was actually too fragile to transport as brain hemorrhaging and other internal bleeding was at risk. A plasma transfusion and some terrific care and Cam made it through the night. Now he is a textbook two-year-old. This scare combined with some issues with pregnancy brought up an option that was previously only in the back of our minds. Why not adopt? We both had thought of it, before, but now it almost seemed to be meant for us. To top it all off, out next door neighbors had just told us they were going to adopt a child from Vietnam. How many times do you need to be kicked in the pants before you act?