00:00I'm so excited to chat with you and congratulations on your beautiful boys.
00:04I mean, they must be keeping you busy nonstop, but you must be like over the moon so excited.
00:09We absolutely are. Martina and I are becoming parents again.
00:13We have four children now and we're such a big difference in age.
00:17So our daughters are almost like built-in babysitters now for the boys.
00:22And boys bring us so much joy and we just love seeing them grow.
00:27Yeah. What's like your most favorite thing to do with them at this stage?
00:31It's like it goes from putting them to sleep and like squeezing them faces to kiss them goodnight and waking up in the morning and they say, call your mommy.
00:42And the little one, he's like this little Mickey Mouse.
00:45He grabs you and kisses you and he's still the baby, you know, he's two and a half.
00:50And just the routine with them and seeing them smile.
00:54Because when they came to us, they did not really smile.
00:58Right. Yeah.
00:58Like we see in this previous, I think it was this previous week's episode that you said, like, obviously they were having an adjustment with crowds and things like that.
01:06So how have they progressed since then in the almost a year?
01:09It's so important to show children, especially who come from foster, who come to a new family, new surrounding, to tell them and give them they will be unconditionally loved, that they will never be taken away again.
01:23And this is their safe home, same family.
01:26So it takes as long as it will take them.
01:28But finally, the moment when you feel they trust you and they can relax and they can give you the smile.
01:34It's like almost you want to cry because you know that how far they came from.
01:38People, so many families and parents have been inspired by your story this season in the process of adoption.
01:43What advice do you have for those that are going through those maybe early stages?
01:47Never lose hope.
01:49Open your heart and be prepared that it's not going to be easy.
01:52I think the hardest part is to see you engage, like, when I talk about it, like, emotional because it is, but it's very rewarding at the end.
02:01When you see those kids finally, oh, my God.
02:05I literally cannot talk about it because, because it's like, I live this really so hard.
02:11What you see on camera is 100% true.
02:13Yeah.
02:14But then you only see, you only see little clips of it.
02:19Sure.
02:19We see the pain, we see the trauma, and then we see the reward.
02:24But it's, oh, my God.
02:26Sorry, sorry, sorry.
02:30You know, obviously, like, I cannot say a lot because I respect my kids' privacy.
02:34Sure, of course.
02:34Yeah.
02:35You know, certain things we learned during the journey with them.
02:39We had them for one year.
02:40It just breaks my heart, and I put my life on hold in a way, Martina as well, but in a way that we only, like, them matter.
02:51We need to get them through to get them to the point to really know that they will never be taken away, and then they will have this stability here.
03:01And the past is the past.
03:03We always will respect it.
03:05You cannot erase it, but there are certain things that kids with trauma need to forget.
03:11It takes a lot of therapy.
03:12It's not easy for the parent.
03:15We learn with Martina as we go.
03:19What it is.
03:20And most of it, it's about finding out what a lot of children, there are more than 100,000 children right now in America, in foster care, waiting for a new home.
03:31And we're just blessed that we were able to give those two boys unconditional love and a different chance for their future.
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