I tend to over explain things – adding details most people don’t care about. My kids, of course, are not most people. They’re endlessly inquisitive and want to know every single detail. They ask who the babies are that pop up on my facebook news feed. Most are from an Asian orphanage I follow. The organization seems to be making an amazing difference in the lives of children with special needs and medical issues.

The adorable children have prompted many conversations at my house. And now they’re inspiring Raine and Athena’s playtime. Athena gathers all the dolls pretending they’re orphans. Recently a foster child visiting for the weekend was playing dolls as well. She pretended to call Athena, asking, “Can you take care of my baby while I go to a meeting today?”

“Sure, if you bring her to the orphanage,” Athena answered. “This is where I am – taking care of the orphans.”

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Raine, on the other hand, bounces around the house telling me of all the ways we can raise money to help fund adoptions for the kids in orphanages. “Everyone needs a mom,” she tells me. “Kids that don’t have one – we must get them one! It’s best to be out of the orphanage.”

I don’t think they fully comprehend that they were once orphans themselves. It’s not a label that’s used for children in Canada. And, thankfully, children here don’t end up in orphanages. But being foster children who were adopted, I think my girls understand on some level the reality of these children.

Raine has written a number on a scrap of paper – something like 1400. It’s how many kids she wants to see adopted. Every time the orphanage I follow on fb posts about a child leaving to be with their forever family, Raine puts a check mark on her paper. Maybe one day there will be enough to cancel out the number she’s written. That’s what she’s working towards. “All kids who need to be adopted, getting adopted that’s what I want,” she tells me with a passion that can’t be quenched while Athena carefully wraps the orphan dolls in blankets telling them not to cry because soon they’ll have a mom.