Blast from the Past: Angelina & Maddox

J/A FAN..126
isitreallythatserious? Says……YOU ARE A J/A FAN, I CAN TELL BY YOUR CRAZINESS. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU FOR A LIFETIME!!

JMO… The haters seem more fixated on J-P fans that on the J-Ps and that’s sad, since the fans are ‘loons with no lives’…

This is a great article on AJ’s adoption of PAX

http://www.rainbowkids.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=471

http://img233.imageshack.us/my.php?image=namibie2006plage7mw7qv2.jpg

I think this is the last pic of her taken when she was pregnant. she was so big.

Looking at all Angie’s pictures that posted here, she is soooooo beautiful inside out.
Can not blame Brad Pitt to fall in love with her, who won’t be?

I miss them too - lol….boy, we didn’t know how lucky we were seeing the fam going on their little morning jaunts in NOLA eh? Don’t get me wrong - I’d rather not see them, and know they are having a blast bonding as a family - and planning more amazing things together. They simply rock like nobody’s business.

I’d love it if they were on their honeymoon right now, and PEOPLE Mag got the exclusive pics AGAIN - this time of a wedding and the whole fam together. Hahahaha!! Would the top of Janice Min’s head blow off or what?! :lol:

…and I can’t believe I’m the first to even say this but….

Hey AUNT BEE….BUZZ OFF!

:lol:

# 143
Skeptic :
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Who cares? at least I’m not a skeptical person like you are.

Hand-picked famlies

More couples are adopting multiple times and reaching out to distant lands

BY RHODA AMON
rhoda.amon@newsday.com

April 6, 2007

As he gathered his large brood for a family portrait, Paul Tonna reflected on the joys of multi-parenthood.

“We’re the most selfish people in the world,” he said of himself and his wife, Carol. “Every day is a party.”

The party consists of the couple’s seven adopted children, ages 1 to 11. Four are Latino, two are African-American and one is American Indian. “My children are all Americans. We talk to them about how America is so great because it is a melting pot,” Paul Tonna said.

Before they started their own melting pot, the Tonnas, who are white, were a consummate career couple, he a young Suffolk County legislator, she commuting to Rockefeller Center, where she was a project manager in telecommunications. Then one day Carol said to Paul, “We’ve got to do something more with our lives.”

The Tonnas became part of a growing trend toward nontraditional multiadoptions. While families of seven or more biologically related children used to be fairly common, the number of large families in which all the kids more or less resemble their parents has been shrinking in recent years as couples marry later and have dual careers.

The proportion of married-couple households with biological children dwindled dramatically, from 40 percent of all households in 1970 to 24 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Census. The number of households of seven or more plummeted from 2.8 million in 1960 to 1.4 million in 2005.

What’s emerging are large families of kids who don’t look like their parents — or each other.

More than 135,000 children are adopted annually, of which 13,000 to 14,000 involve babies voluntarily relinquished domestically, according to the latest survey by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. Of non-stepparent adoptions, 26 percent come from abroad — a whopping increase from 5 percent of adoptions reported in 1992.

The boom in international adoptions is, in large part, due to a steady drop in numbers of young children available for adoption inside the United States, down from 132,000 in 2000 to 118,000 in 2004, due to lower birth rates and increased acceptance of single parenthood.

Actress Angelina Jolie lent glamour to this trend with her much-publicized adoptions of Maddox, 5, from Cambodia, Pax Thien, 3, from Vietnam and Zahara, 2, from Ethiopia. Her family also includes Shiloh, a daughter born 11 months ago to Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt.

“I have the ability to help children fulfill their desire” for a home and family, the actress recently told a Vietnamese newspaper. “Why should I say no?”

The numbers of American families saying “yes” to transracial adoptions amounts to a whole revolution in adoption, once largely considered the province of “white parents adopting white infants given up by unwed mothers,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute. Besides societal changes in America, the trend in overseas adoption has been influenced by world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, which revealed large numbers of children in orphanages needing homes, and the Chinese one-child policy, which led to the abandonment of baby girls, Pertman said.

“It’s challenging our understanding of what is a family, when families don’t look the way we used to think of families,” Pertman said. “It impacts the whole community.”

High cost, long wait

It’s not always easy to say “yes” to overseas adoptions, which can cost $16,000 to $30,000, including legal and travel expenses, and applicants may have to wait months or even years to cut through bureaucratic regulations and bring home a child.

In most cases, it’s easier to adopt older American children now in foster care looking for permanent families. There’s some evidence that adoptive parents who originally sought infants are willing to compromise on age. The Suffolk County Social Services Department reported that of 130 finalized adoptions last year, 68 were

7 and older, including 10 who were 16 or older, the highest number ever, said Dennis Nowak, a spokesman for the department’s children’s services.

Get-acquainted visits

Alcides and Gladys Rivera of Patchogue, both Puerto Rican born and Brooklyn raised, were ready to adopt any child they fell in love with, regardless of age and ethnic origin. “We were absolutely open-minded,” Gladys said. They took the county training program and became certified adoptive parents. After weekend get-acquainted visits, they knew they wanted Stephanie, an African-American now 14, who became available for adoption three years ago. More recently, they added Tatiana, 3, and Izabella, 2, sisters of mixed African-American and Dominican heritage.

Joseph and Denise Saggio, both 46, are advocates for orphans wherever they’re found. They first adopted Christopher, 8, and Emma, 5, from South Korea, then reached out to Guatemala for Vincent, now 11 months. “There are 143 million orphans in this world,” Denise reflected in her sunny Stony Brook kitchen under banner letters spelling out W-E-L-C-O-M-E- H-O-M-E-V-I-N-C-E-N-T.

The Saggios, who have three older biological children ages 16, 14 and 11, do more than adopt — they encourage other adoptive families through a support group started in their church, the Smithtown Gospel Tabernacle. The Adoption and Orphan Care Ministry now numbers 15 families, most of whom have adopted or want to. One couple, Sherry and Cliff Schrage of Center Moriches, are working on their sixth adoption.

Extraordinary parents

Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study recently published in the American Sociological Review. Perhaps because they “really want children and will go to extraordinary means to have them,” adoptive parents spend more time reading to them, talking with them, helping with their homework and exposing them to cultural activities, the study co-authors said. The only category in which adoptive parents fared worse was in not talking as frequently with parents of other children.

That’s where the church support group is most helpful, said Joseph Saggio. “We help each other go through the adoption process. You don’t feel alone when you can talk to someone who has been through it before and can tell you what the next step will be.”

There are other hurdles. Some neighbors are less than friendly to a large, mixed-race brood. “They get over it when they get to know the kids,” Saggio said. Older children may have difficulty adjusting to a different way of life. A Brooklyn couple who adopted three Latino sisters, ages 9 to 13, reported that at first they were “bouncing off the walls.” With regular mealtime and bedtime hours, the energy explosion subsided.

Ethnic identity

An important question for international adoptive parents is: “How can I help the kids feel comfortable in their own skin?” said Pertman of the Donaldson Adoption Institute who is working on a study of identity. “From mega-issues it comes down to ‘How can I help with my daughter’s hair, which is not the same as my hair?’”

The close bond that develops among member families of the church group helps the children feel accepted, Denise Saggio said. At get-togethers with some 30 adopted children, Christopher Saggio hangs out with Russian-born Yuri. “We have a lot of fun,” he said.

Korean-born Thomas Schrage, 16, has given more thought to adoption than Christopher has. “I’ve never felt out of place at all,” said Thomas, president of the sophomore class at Center Moriches High School. “But if God hadn’t provided me with this family, I don’t know where I would be now.”

Though raising the children as Americans, the Saggios want them to know their heritage. Christopher and Emma Saggio will go to a Korean weekend school in the fall.

The church group also assists families shouldering the financial burden. Members recently raised $2,500 to aid a couple adopting an Ethiopian child. The Saggios advise other families on resources available to them, such as a federal tax credit of $10,960 over a five-year period for adoptive parents with adjusted gross income of less than $204,410.

“We’ve always had a heart for kids without mommies and daddies,” said Cliff Schrage, 49, a Uniondale High School English teacher. In about five weeks, the Schrages will be off to Africa to pick up a 5-year-old boy, whom they have never seen.

The boy, whom they will call Samuel El Sheday Schrage, was one of a group of Ethiopian orphans brought to the United States last year by the Gladney Center for Adoption in Texas. “My wife was upset when she read that he didn’t find a home here,” Schrage recalled. “Every little boy needs a family. We said, ‘OK, here we go again.’”

The Schrages, who grew up together in Sayville, friends since age 11, have a biological daughter, Sarah, 24, now married and teaching in California; another daughter, Rebecca, died at a year old. Besides Thomas, they’ve adopted Laura, 19, now studying at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and Zachary, 12, both from Korea; a Cherokee Indian child named Abigail, 9, and Gabriel, 7, a Latino boy from the Bronx.

Like the other families, the Schrages do not let cultural or racial differences deter them when it comes to adoption. “Kids are kids,” said Cliff Schrage, who has published a novel, “A Fruitful Field,” partly based on adoption.

“We love the diversity,” said Denise Saggio, an attorney and now a stay-at-home mom who home-schools her kids. Her husband is co-owner of a Hauppauge-based computer business.

Church families will be hosting 10 Ethiopian orphans brought to Long Island in July by the Texas agency. The children will get free medical and dental exams, ice cream parties and a chance at a permanent home. More host families are needed.

The Tonnas, too, are unconcerned with ethnicity. “Our children just see each other as brothers and sisters,” Paul Tonna said. “We just asked for a baby,” said Carol Tonna, recalling how it all began. After trying to adopt locally, they learned in 1996 that a Mexican-American infant in Texas was ready to be picked up. “It took my wife one second to quit her job,” Paul Tonna said. After Paul, now 11, came John and Grace, both 10, Mary, 8, Carolann, 7, Joseph, 3, and Lucy, 1. An older son, Peter, 25, from a previous marriage, became “a happy big brother,” his dad said.

“My wife has found her true vocation, giving of herself,” said Tonna, 48. “And we have a lot of fun,” he added as Lucy crawled from one parent to the other, rewarded by a hug from each.

The children, born in different parts of the United States, share the Tonnas’ 200-year-old Huntington home, built by poet Walt Whitman’s grandfather in 1810. As with most suburban children, their days are packed with myriad after-school and weekend activities, including horseback riding, swimming lessons, band practice, piano, Cub Scouts and Brownies. Last vacation the Tonnas packed the family into their sturdy van and drove to Florida, with stops in Washington and Disney World.

As a Suffolk legislator for 12 years, including three as presiding officer, Tonna advocated for the poor, homeless and marginalized on Long Island, working for affordable housing and to eliminate child poverty. Now he is CEO of a preventive health care company in Hicksville and director of the Energeia Partnership, a leadership-training branch of Molloy College.

“You need two jobs when you have eight kids,” he said.

Tonna, who was recently named by Networking magazine as a “renaissance man” who enriches Long Island life, said his only regret is “that we didn’t start adopting earlier. I would like to have five more.”

Adoption came naturally to the Riveras. Alcides was himself adopted. Gladys Vasquez Rivera grew up surrounded by foster children and has two adopted brothers. Working since she was 14, she had a child at age 15. “Having a child kept me focused,” she said.

Married 10 years, the couple planned to adopt when they built their spacious four-bedroom house in Patchogue four years ago, “My daughter Ashley asked, why such a big house?” Gladys, now 35, recalled. “I told her ‘Don’t worry, it will be filled.’”

“I love my girls, though they rule over me,” Alcides Rivera, 41, joked as he hugged the two toddlers in a playroom dominated by colorful toys and a flat-screen TV playing cartoons. The Riveras retain cordial relationship with the children’s birth mother, who surrendered them for adoption “with conditions,” which allow her limited visitation.

Life is not easy. Alcides, who has two older children from a previous marriage, commutes to his job as a butcher in Brooklyn. Gladys catches the 6:50 a.m. out of Patchogue, then takes two subways to her job in a Manhattan medical office. Ashley, 19, gets the 2- and 3-year-old off to nursery school. Recreation is taking the whole family out to dinner.

Most of the families encourage the adopted children to appreciate their own heritage, and some steep themselves in the traditions. Carol Tonna is just back from an “eye-opener” trip to Africa, where she taught micro-gardening and experienced life in a mud hut.

Joe Saggio and his two oldest children, Joseph and Victoria, recently returned from Guatemala, where they delivered 1,500 donated pairs of shoes at eight orphanages.

More than shoes, he said, the children there “need someone to love them.”
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

Hey SKEPTIC, I brought back and oldie but goodie just for you — check out your girl in the side column! LMAO :-)

http://www.panopticist.com/graphics/uterus_weekly.jpg

One thing I never fail to get a laugh from his the haters sitting here all day, day after day, telling us how sick WE are. LOOOOL
:lol: :lol: :lol:

How bizarre that Oprah is discussing celebrities and tabloids just when we all were thinking she should do a segment on her program on this LOL!!!!!

Oprah mentions that she knew people talking about Brad & Angelina’s new child as if they knew them. Oprah said to her friends “do you know them”? LOL!!!!!

Hey Clini—how are you? Here are a few more pics I’d forgotten I had saved…

http://picasaweb.google.es/hans.santamaria/AngelinaYBrad28DeDic2006Amador?authkey=Rh7nUjv7PJI