Tag: family


Feb
2016

Meet the Mama – Jane Maritz, new Cape Town Heart Mama

categories: Home, Meet the Mama

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Jane and I have something in common – we both walked the adoption journey with the same wonderful adoption agency, Wandisa. I met Jane and her family at a big family picnic arranged by Wandisa and we got to chat a little bit in between the distraction of toddler tears when countless big orange helium balloons flew up to the clouds and  general kid chaos. Thank you for sharing your story, Jane.

Tell us a bit about your family.

My husband, Adrian and I have been married for 2 years now, together for 5 years. We live in Cape Town. Adrian has lived in Cape Town his whole life, I was born in SA but grew up in the USA (in Denver Colorado) and moved back to SA when I was 21. Finally, after a very long but worthwhile wait, we were blessed with our son, Noah, in July of last year. And when I say blessed, I really mean it! He is the most chilled out, happy little soul who is always smiling, barely ever cries and he has slept through the night since the day he came home.

He’s a total daddy’s boy – ‘the two best friends that anyone could have’. I can’t believe it’s only been 6 months. I can’t imagine life without him. Continue Reading


Jan
2016

Happy adoption day Miss Kira

categories: Home

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In our family, we celebrate birthdays and adoption days – the day that each child joined our family and became a Kynie. This means that our calendar is doubly full of celebrations which is wonderful and busy and wonderfully busy. Any excuse for a party, right? Today, Kira has been home for two years. Two short years. Two special years. Continue Reading


Dec
2015

Meet the Mama – Sonja Meyer: Joburg Mom of FOUR

categories: Home, Meet the Mama

8f7c2773.jpgSonja and her husband Paul are the proud parents of four kids: Mia, Micah, Max and Macy. Sonja is a hands-on multi-tasking stay at home mom who home schools her eldest two. Thanks for finding the time to share the story of your rainbow nation family with us, Sonja!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your family.

My husband and I stay in Johannesburg and we have four adopted children. Two beautifully free little girls aged nine years and 11 months. And two wonderfully wild boys who are seven and two years old. Building a family through adoption has been a truly incredible journey that turned out being much less scary than people think. In most aspects we are just a normal family and yet I will never forget how the gift of adoption has brought these four remarkable kids into my life! Continue Reading


Nov
2015

‘I’m adopted’ – An interview with Bridget Tuffin

categories: 'I'm adopted', Home

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Bridget is an amazing young lady who works as a freelance hair and make-up artist and I met her and her skills at a blogger event recently. We got chatting and next thing I know we were talking about my kids (I do this a lot) and Bridget told me that she was also adopted. It’s really amazing that we met like this. And so we hugged and became friends and I’ve asked Bridget to share her story with us as it is such a beautiful story of adoption and family and resilience and triumph. Thank you for sharing your story, Bridget!Continue Reading


Nov
2015

Prepared not Scared – About attachment in adoption by Alexa Russell Matthews

categories: Home

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Alexa Russell Matthews is a Social Worker with a Master’s Degree in Social Work (Play Therapy) from the University of Pretoria.  She’s also a future adoptive mom and one of her most passionate work spaces has been engaging with children who are still in children’s homes or with children and families post adoption. I met Alexa at the Arise Adoption Conference at the end of last month and just loved how she explained the importance of attachment in adoption, so I asked her to put it down on paper for us.  Over to you, Alexa!

‘Prepared, not scared.’ I love this phrase which was repeated last weekend by Debbie Burt throughout the discussion on adoption and older children at the Arise Cape Town conference. During this session, a question arose, a commonly asked question about RAD – Reactive Attachment Disorder and its prevalence.  People who google ‘pros and cons of adoption’ or google ‘adopting an older child’ or read print stories of attachment are bound to encounter this term. It’s often used to dissuade people from adopting, or simply used to tell dramatic stories of ‘children gone bad’. Continue Reading