Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Lisa Firebaugh reads "I Don't Have Your Eyes," a children's book about adoption, with her daughter, Midora, 5. Lisa and her husband, Wayne, adopted Midora from South Korea.

Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Lisa and Wayne Firebaugh adopted their daughter, Midora, 5, from South Korea when she was a baby.

The Firebaughs took this family portrait on their first Mother's Day with Midora.

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Six years ago, Lisa Firebaugh, a pediatric speech pathologist, was working in the neonatal intensive care unit at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, specializing in feeding infants.

One particular baby boy would eat only if Lisa was feeding him, and her co-workers teased her about taking him home. While that wasn't an option, her thoughts turned to the cleft palate treatment team she worked with.

For the first 14 years of their marriage, Lisa and Wayne Firebaugh focused on their careers. Wayne is a certified financial planner with his own company. They had always wanted to have kids, but the timing was never right, though adoption had always been on their minds.

"A lot of people look at adoption as sort of a plan B. ... For us, it was definitely our plan A, we definitely knew that," Lisa said. "We always knew in our hearts that there was a really strong, pulling desire for us to adopt."

Soon, she e-mailed Washington, D.C.-based Associated Services for International Adoption to ask about the process of adopting a baby with a cleft palate.

The day Lisa e-mailed the adoption agency, a social worker had intended to put the photograph of a 4-month-old girl with a cleft palate on the agency's Web site. Instead, the social worker called Lisa and her husband and invited them to her home for a meeting the Sunday before Christmas 2002.

When the couple saw a picture of the baby, they knew she was meant to be their daughter. And when Lisa noticed that the baby and Wayne share a birthday -- Aug. 25 -- everyone agreed.

"'Clearly this is providential,' " Wayne recalled the social worker saying. "'I believe every baby is intended for a certain family, and this baby is intended for you.' "

Completing the adoption process in reverse order, the Firebaughs had the baby held for them, got a referral from the agency that day, and came back to Roanoke to start the home study process that week. Getting an immediate start was important -- the baby had undergone two surgeries for her cleft palate in South Korea, but Lisa wanted the third and most important surgery to be completed in Roanoke under a staff she knew and trusted.

The Firebaughs got fingerprinted, proved their financial status, answered questionnaires, wrote narratives and waited to be approved by the United States and South Korea. Four months later, they picked up their new baby from her foster mother, Mrs. Kim, in Seoul.

Kim named the girl NaRae. One of the interpretations the Firebaughs have heard for the name is "Beauty coming to her," a name they thought was perfect for their beautiful baby who had a cleft palate.

Midora is an invention of their own. Dora, from Dorothy, means "God's gift" and the Firebaugh's interpret their daughter's name to mean, "My gift from God."

An open family

Midora NaRae Firebaugh knows Lisa is not her birth mother. Lisa talks to her daughter about her "first mom," foster mom and herself. But when others ask about Midora's "real mom," Lisa has an answer ready.

"I'm pretty real, and I'm her mom," the stay-at-home mom will say, not quite offended -- the first time.

"It's just ignorance, people don't know," she explained. "So I use it as an opportunity to educate them. And I think then I expect them to do better."

Though talking about adoption is a huge part of the Firebaughs' lives, Lisa doesn't like for it to define her family.

"We have not had any prejudices at all," Lisa said gratefully. "People just pour attention on, which is good, it's positive attention, but it still tells her that she's different."

Lisa knows that Midora sees daily how she is different but tries to help her see similarities, too. She tells her daughter that their family's story is different from the stories of her classmates at Faith Christian Academy, but each of them has a different story, too, and the little girl should respect all of them.

And respecting other people's cultures comes easily for the 5-year-old who grew up surrounded by music, artwork, books and even dolls of various origins.

"If you look in her room, we have babies in all different races," Lisa said of her daughter's toys. "Race and ethnicity is a nonissue for us."

Lisa and Wayne, both 41, will be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary this year. After living 12 years in the Grandin Road area, the Firebaughs recently moved to a downtown Roanoke building, where they live in a condominium upstairs while Wayne's office is downstairs. This past Tuesday, they celebrated their fifth "Forever Family" anniversary, commemorating Midora's adoption.

Five years ago on Mother's Day, the Firebaughs took their first family portrait. Now, on the family's fifth Mother's Day, they're in the beginning stages of a second adoption -- one Lisa hopes is not their last.