Parenting Guru

Waiting to adopt a child can seem like the endless journey without a map. One way to make the time go faster is to go ahead and start an adoption scrapbook album. Journaling your thoughts about the waiting process, the things you’ve bought, the home study, etc. will all help you feel like the arrival of the child is the next step. Plus, you’ll begin to see why recording your thoughts will be so precious when your child arrives.

Adoption albums don’t have to be overwhelming. The best place to start is with a list of topics about the adoption experience. These can be found on a variety of web sites including my own which has over 150 topics.

Consider purchasing a pre-made adoption album. You can buy a hard-cover book at your favorite bookstore, or even hire a freelance scrapbooker to do a pre-designed book for you. One of the best is the Adoption Scrapbook Album which is twenty pages of overlays, where you get to choose five that specifically fits your child’s experience. They make your book look like it was designed by a professional, but with the price tag of doing it yourself.

Go visit your local craft store or scrapbook store to get some stickers and other embellishments. I rarely find more than a couple that specifically mention adoption, but buy some that have sayings about family, baby happenings, love, and other life events. You can use these in your book when you have a little spot to fill. It adds some style.

Have fun writing down the day-to-day stuff and taking photos of silly things. Now with digital cameras you can take dozens of photos of things a close up of Cheerios to the pile of laundry. The more creative photos you take, the more fun you’ll have journaling. Later on, you’ll be glad you wrote and photographed about the uneventful stuff too and your child will love reading about it.

Be creative, but not obsessively so. You don’t have to go to “cropping parties.” Invest in a nice paper cutter, don’t bother cutting photos into circles, matte them using solid-color card stock and buy patterned paper in bulk.

Write it down now. It’s a good idea to get the adoption scrapbook album done sooner rather than later so your toddler can look at it, at least start keeping notes as you go so you will have lots of journaling ideas to choose from. Purchase a small notepad to carry around in the diaper bag so you have it handy when you want to write down something that happened or just record your thoughts.

My son turns five-years-old this month. I remember the first year of his life when I got so tired of strangers approaching me to say, “It goes so fast.” But now I am one of those people, smiling at little babies and telling new moms, “Cherish this time. It goes so fast.” Adoption is such an incredible experience. It’s easy to believe that you will remember every emotion you beheld when you looked into your sweet one’s eyes. But let’s get real! Our brains can only hold so much. And our children do grow up so quickly. Record those treasured memories now before you forget.

The Adoption Scrapbook Album is a quick, easy way to design a personalized lifebook. Use transparency overlays and friends will admire–even if you aren’t crafty. Free downloads from Lisa Copen at Scrapbook My Adoption