National Adoption Day 2008 
By CHRISTINA DeNARDO
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2008
WEST PALM BEACH — For nearly 20 years, Marji and Fred Van Hine wanted a child. Adoption was too expensive. They tried a surrogate. Then another. And another. Each attempt failed and eventually the couple stopped talking about making a family.
"We accepted that it was going to be me and him and that's it," said Marji Van Hine, 49.
But on Friday, the couple was one of 30 families to adopt a foster child, 2-year-old Kira, as part of National Adoption Day."I've been waiting for this day forever," said Marji Van Hine. "I can't believe it. I've got to pinch myself."
There are more than 1,000 foster children in Palm Beach County, nearly 200 of them eligible for adoption, according to the Children's Home Society, which coordinated Adoption Day. On Friday, 37 children ranging from 2 years old to 12 were adopted. Several families adopted more than one child, including a grandmother who adopted her 13th and 14th children, two school-age brothers.
"All her children are grown and she has a big empty house," said Harriet Zeikowitz, an adoption specialist who works with families. "And now that she has the boys, she said she wants girls."
Another family has been raising a cocaine-addicted child since she was a 3-pound preemie. Just like the Van Hines, they waited two years to adopt.
Some of the parents are like the Van Hines: the only parents the children have known. The suburban Boca Raton couple became Kira's foster parents when she was four days old, after her mother admitted to smoking crack cocaine a few days before giving birth. They saw the child roll over for the first time, take her first steps, say her first words.
Though Kira felt like their daughter, she wasn't. Case workers visited to inspect the house and if they wanted to travel, they had to get approval.
Not long after they celebrated her first birthday, the state took her away. Her mother told the court that she was off drugs and the state wanted to put Kira back with her biological mother.
"It was hell," Marji Van Hine said. "I didn't think I would get her back. I was worried sick about this kid when she was with her mother."
Van Hine became depressed and she refused to celebrate Thanksgiving or decorate the house for Christmas. A month later, the state called the couple and asked if they wanted Kira back.
But when they brought her back, she was different. Every time someone came over, she feared they would take her away. And Marji Van Hine worried about that, too.
But not anymore.
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