There's no place like home

Diana Verhulst collects her dirtied dinner dishes as her family finishes bowls of ice cream for dessert.

“Thank you very much,” Diana, 8, says to her mother, Anne Verhulst. “Bye, Mama.”

“You’re welcome,” Anne says quietly to her daughter. “Brush your teeth.”

The little girl joins her three siblings in the kitchen, cleaning up after a Friday night family dinner. Diana, along with her sisters Mayerly, 7, and Claudia, 6, finish and retreat upstairs to their rooms, completing a puzzle together. Their older brother, 11-year-old Oscar, remains downstairs, playing with his yo-yo.

Six months into 2009, it’s been a year of firsts for Anne and Tim Verhulst. Their first year as parents. A first of celebrating Mother’s and Father’s days. A first of having other occupants in their 100-year-old two-story home in western Independence.

Many couples who adopt want a baby, a single child still in diapers, a person with no memories or history. Instead, Anne and Tim adopted four children with an already-established language who might have otherwise been split up and sent to separate homes.

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Growing up, Anne says she always knew she would adopt children, though the topic wasn’t initially discussed when she married. Tim, on the other hand, “didn’t see it coming,” he says.

“I was never opposed to it; it was just never in the back of my mind,” Tim says. “Then we decided to do it, and I said, ‘That’s good.’” 

Tim, 41, and Anne, 38, met quietly while Tim performed maintenance duties in an office where Anne worked in Kansas City. They dated three years and married in September 1997. One month later, they moved into their Independence home.  

It’s not that they couldn’t bear children of their own. Tim and Anne went about their lifestyles without children. They owned several dogs along the way, including the family’s 2-year-old golden retriever Hanai (meaning “adopted one” in Hawaiian).

As they saw their siblings with children of their own, the Verhulsts started researching adoption options in China, Russia and other countries before settling on Colombia. The couple initially wanted two children, but as they saw the four children online, they thought, “If we can have two, we can have four,” knowing that the children would otherwise be split up among two families.

The process took exactly one year from start to finish. The three girls and one boy arrived in Independence five months ago.

People often remarked to Tim and Anne, “Well, why didn’t you get a baby? You’re going to miss so many of these first things that they do.”

Anne acknowledges that the children have had their firsts in their short lifetimes, but when Oscar first moved to the United States, he couldn’t ride a bike.

Now, he can.

“So, we got that, and he’s 11 years old,” Anne says. “Maybe we didn’t hear their first words, but we heard their first English words.”

Oscar stops playing with his yo-yo briefly and stands near his mother, patiently answering questions like “What is your favorite activity in school?”

“My favorite is cocina!” the freckled boy exclaims.

“He likes to cook,” Anne says in translation.

“Oscar, what do you think of Mama and Papi?”

“Buen trabajo,” he says, giggling.

“He says, ‘They do a good job,’” Anne translates again.

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The couple’s blog, losseisverhulsts.blogspot.com, is appropriately titled “...Hang On...” The main photograph features Tim and Anne smiling brightly as they travel on speed boats on Lake Michigan in Chicago.

“It’s all gone much faster than we expected,” they wrote in mid-January, just days before they flew to Colombia. “It pretty well sums up what we have felt like since we started this little adventure.”

Tim and Anne certainly did their homework prior to adoption, but “I don’t know if there is a way you can learn from a book how to become a parent,” Anne contends. Going from zero to four children at once, the expectations are unclear, she says. 

“The thing is, the books don’t really prepare you,” Anne says, laughing. “Most of the books don’t deal with if you adopt siblings. I mean, there’s not a whole lot out there for that. They’re mostly if you already have children and then you adopt.”

For example, the children actually get along, Tim says, and the books rarely mentioned sibling interaction. They also leave out details on quirky children’s actions and habits they developed inside the orphanage, he says.

The children would hoard food and eat quickly because they learned in Colombia that little food was available. Six months into their life in America, they’re slowing down, Tim says.

“When we first got them, they just ate everything that you set in front of them,” Anne says.

“Did you see that bowl of rice and beans that we put away where there was still some left?” Tim asks after a recent dinner. “They’d have literally eaten until it was all gone, and they’d be almost sick. They’d eat it as fast as they could so they could get another plate.”

Tim and Anne never saw the children’s orphanage in person, though they saw several photographs online. With concrete walls, they described it as “not nice-looking” and “very institutionalized.”

A good education is at the forefront of Tim’s and Anne’s minds in raising their children. All four children spoke not a word of English when they touched American soil – not even “Hi,” “Bye” or “Thank you.” 

“Down there, I thought it was even worse,” Anne says when asked how it affected her and her husband when the children first moved in. “Everyone there spoke Spanish, so they had people to talk to and it wasn’t us. It made it real hard when we were down there, but when we came back, it got even better. They were pretty much forced to learn English.”

They’ve still got catching up to do, Tim says.

The children are fully aware of their adoption. The Colombian ICBF – which is translated as the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare – prepared the children several months in advance. Tim and Anne also mailed them photographs of themselves, the house, other family members and friends, as well as toys. 

“Even before they find a family for them, they’re preparing them for adoption,” Anne says. “That’s pretty much their only hope.”

Colombia is notoriously known for its violations of children’s rights, with an especially high rate of recruitment and use of child soldiers. The couple has information about the children’s biological family, but they declined specific details for privacy reasons. Basically, they were abandoned, Tim says.

The children talk about the orphanage, Anne says, but it’s not in a “I wish I could go back” sense.

“They were kind of like, ‘We’re outta here,’” Tim says. “It didn’t sound like a good place to be.”

Especially with the older two children, some orphanage memories may scar them, Anne admits.

The orphanage was located in a poorer area of Bogota, Colombia, the country’s capital city. When they arrived to their new home, the children used to make a remark that saddened Anne.

“United States is clean, and Colombia is dirty,” the children would say.

During their three-week stay, Tim and Anne stayed in a wealthier section. They taught the children that trash is placed in a garbage can, not thrown on the streets, as well as not eating gum and food off the streets.

Their only toys were those that Tim and Anne had previously sent them. The children didn’t own a single book. They entered the United States with only the clothes on their backs – literally.

“Adopting kids from a much poorer country makes us appreciate what we have – there’s no doubt,” Tim says. “We pick them up from the orphanage, and they had nothing. You see pictures of our kids wearing clothes that other kids are probably wearing in another picture, so nobody has any property, really.”

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Despite some social stigma that exist about western Independence, the Verhulsts are happy raising a young family in their home of more than 10 years. The children started school in April and are currently attending summer school. The girls attended North Rock Creek/Korte Elementary School, which was annexed into the Independence School District last year. Anne’s mother, a retired schoolteacher, home schooled Oscar since he was older and needed more socialization preparation.

“That was the best thing that’s happened here – the schools going into Independence,” Tim says. “The whole attitude of the neighborhood changed.”

The Verhulsts are active in the Neighbors of Winner Road Association, with Anne serving as the group’s treasurer. Anne says she thinks the neighborhood atmosphere is stronger in western Independence – she’d rather live on the west side than in a brand-new subdivision.

Tim and Anne are a fairly soft-spoken couple who described themselves as “pretty average”

They never thought anyone would share the responses that they have regarding the adoption. Anne shrugs.

“I just don’t like to make a big fuss out of things,” she says.

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Anne’s advice for those who aspire to adopt is rather simple: Research it as much as possible.

“People that have adopted kids will take the time to sit down with you,” Tim says. “They’ll invite you to their house; it’s a good resource. People are very willing to share.”

Adoption forms an inadvertent support group or community, they said. Nobody understands what you’re going through like they do, Anne says.

“With family, they have kids, but they don’t understand because it is different,” she says. “It’s not just like raising any kid because they have a past.”

Allan Verhulst, Tim’s father and Grandview, Mo., resident, says his initial response was disbelief in the family growing from zero to four children, but now, “It’s wonderful and great.”

“I think it’s a wonderful thing to be a parent. You have a lot of responsibilities, but a lot of joys and wonderful things happen in being a parent,” Allan says. “It certainly changes your lifestyle to have the responsibilities of four children. They seem to really taken to living with the children in a great manner.”

Previously, it never crossed his mind that he might be the grandfather of four children from another country, Allan says.

 “It’s wonderful to see Tim and Anne as they’ve moved into becoming parents of four children,” he says. “They’ve taken them to various places and the children seem to be growing and becoming a close-knit family.”