April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
ADOPTION
Taye gets a warm welcome to the Frost family
Taye gets a warm welcome to the Frost family
Mr. Frost, and his wife, Karen, recently adopted a nine-year-old son, Tayeshawn. Spunky and playful, he's into videogames and superheroes; he insisted on putting the candy into the Spiderman piñata at his birthday party in July and saved Spiderman's head afterward.
Taye, as he likes to be called, joins 11-year-old brother Matthew in the Frost home. The family attends St. Jude the Apostle parish in Wynantskill; Taye will be a fourth-grader at Poestenkill Elementary School and Matthew will be entering sixth grade at Algonquin Middle School.
But there's another brother Taye won't meet: Joseph Frost passed away in 2014 at age 11, after a battle with a rare brain disease.
"It was a very slow goodbye," said Mrs. Frost, who's a speech pathologist with the Center for Disabilities Services and Rensselaer County.
Joseph was a spiritual child who enjoyed attending Mass and reading the Gospels. "Joseph loved God," said his mother; he would even play "church."
After Joseph passed away, the Frosts took classes with the goal of foster parenting and adoption. They didn't share that information with friends or family at first, and focused on making sure Matthew was comfortable and had a voice in the situation.
"We wanted to adopt a third child," Mrs. Frost explained. "When you think of adoption, you think 'baby,'" but they also liked the idea of adopting an older child.
The family pored over adoption websites, reading bios of children in the foster care system who were available for adoption. In August 2015, Mrs. Frost came across the description of a little boy in the Boston area who loved Spiderman.
"I had a good feeling," she recalled.
Taye's bio on the website "just seemed like a little boy that was just looking for a loving and caring family," Mrs. Frost said. "Like my husband says, we have a lot to give. [Taye's] looking to be loved. It's almost like we were meant for each other."
The Frosts followed up, and they got a call that they were chosen as a match. On Nov. 27, they were finally able to meet Taye. Coincidentally, that was Joseph's birthday.
Matthew played with his soon-to-be little brother as the Frosts spoke with a social worker. "It was a really long visit," Mrs. Frost said. "We all just seemed very comfortable."
Afterward, her husband noted, he was "a little reluctant" about taking the next step -- until he had a dream in which a voice he believes was the Holy Spirit said to him, "I want you to do this."
He woke up and told his wife he was ready. After another visit and a few months of video chatting, Taye arrived in the Albany Diocese on May 26 at 2:03 p.m.
Taye noted that he found out about the adoption while he was in his former foster home. The social worker assigned to his case told him. "I was pretty happy," he said. "I was excited."
Taye was greeted at the airport with balloons, friends and his new family. On his first day at home, his new father told him, "There's always food in the fridge. There's always someone here with you. You're always safe here."
"The second day [Taye] got here, he wrote his name" with his new last name, said Mrs. Frost. Taye immediately started calling the Frosts "Mom" and "Dad," too.
"He's not a guest; he belongs here," Mr. Frost declared on a recent afternoon, noting that the family is meshing together pretty seamlessly.
The men of the house are currently building a tree fort together. Mr. Frost recalled when he only had to supervise Matthew's use of the tools; now, he's got the welcome challenge of splitting his attention between Matthew and Taye. Now, when asked to describe his family in one word, Taye will say "hope."
"I think him meeting us and us meeting him gave him hope, to finally get a family, and it gave us hope to finally add another child to love in our family," Mrs. Frost told The Evangelist.
Taye says his favorite part of having become part of the Frost clan is "having somebody to play with." Matthew noted that he and his little brother like to play basketball together outside and football on the Nintendo Wii, and swim in the family pool.
"Matthew is his swim coach," Mrs. Frost remarked, explaining that Taye had been hesitant in the water at first, but his new brother helped him take the plunge.
There have been some people who judged the family's decision to adopt after Joseph's death, but the Frosts know that Taye belongs in their family. "I see it as, 'I have a third son,'" Mrs. Frost said. "We believe that we have Joseph's blessing. We have to keep moving forward."
Besides, said Mr. Frost, even Jesus was essentially adopted by Joseph, and Mary, Joseph and Jesus were a family. "We're just a mom and a dad and three boys. We're not different," Mr. Frost said.[[In-content Ad]]
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