When you are waiting to adopt a child, especially your first, it can seem to take forever, regardless of how long or short the wait actually is. One way to pass the time is to start your adoption scrapbook album now. As you begin to record some of your thoughts at the time you'll see why it's so important to still take the time after 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.
Visit your local scrapbook store or craft store and find some stickers and other embellishments. You'll find that few mention adoption specifically, but you can find a lot of stickers with saying about family, baby milestones, love, and other life events. You can add these to your book when you need a little spot to fill and it adds some character.
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 in a couple of week. The first year of his life I grew so weary of strangers telling me, ""It goes so fast."" But now I am one of those people smiling at little babies and gushing to new moms, ""Cherish this time. It goes too fast."" Adoption is such an extraordinary experience. It is so easy to think that you will remember every emotion you ever have when you look into your sweet baby's eyes. But come on... our brains can only hold so much. Our children do grow up so quickly, so record those cherished memories now before you forget.
The Adoption Scrapbook Album is a fast, simple way to create a professional lifebook. Use transparency overlays and friends will admire--even though you aren't crafty. Free poems and quotes from Lisa Copen at Scrapbook My Adoption