She says it well

When talking about the first year of having Kevin with us, I often say something like, "I knew it would be hard but I didn't know how much I would hate how hard it was."

This is a paragraph from a long article on msn.com (reprinted from Redbook magazine.) I love the last sentence.

Quote from Jen Nickel, adoptive mother:

To help get the boys ready, we made a video of ourselves showing them our home and things like the table where we'd eat — with places set for them. Then we spent a week in Missouri getting to know them. They'd been with their foster mom for three years; even though she'd prepared them well, their first year with us wasn't easy. Greg had a breakdown in a restaurant, crying that we'd stolen him. It took Eric longer to show his grief, but he was processing a lot of pain, too. We loved the idea of our kids even before we were matched with them, but loving the reality of your children — that's a process, one that's both wonderful and hard.