A woman and her husband adopted three brothers, a big responsibility to take on.
Julia Washington and her husband then realized that the three brothers had another brother, who was 17 months old. However, with three adopted sons and two children of their own, they knew they couldn’t handle the responsibility. One of the boys had “major special needs,” she said.
But if he wasn’t adopted, the three brothers would be more than 1,000 miles away from their brother.
Washington’s neighbor, Jay, then decided to step in. Jay talked to the state’s Child Protective Services to adopt the youngest, named Elijah, which means the four brothers will essentially be able to grow up with one another.
“We are not the same people as before,” she added.
The boys previously were in foster care.
“I’m the youngest of seven kids and I was adopted,” Houston added. “Growing up, that’s always something I wanted to do.”
“It was immediate,” she noted, speaking of adopting Elijah. “His former foster mom sent us video of him laughing, smiling, crawling and I knew he'd fit right in.”
“When I found out about Elijah we were still in the process of bringing our boys home,” Julia Washington said. “We went from having two to five kids and one has special needs. We weren’t sure if we were able to take in another child. I knew how important it was to [Houston] to keep siblings together. They said they were open to have another child and we made a pact to keep them together so it kind of just fell into place.”
