I was never going to be a scrapbooker. The books I saw were
lovely, but the idea of cutting my photos and then taking the
time to add something those crazy people called
embellishments? Let's just say I wasn't a "sticker" kind of gal.

But upon the arrival of my son, I wanted to record those special
moments and I couldn't locate a baby book or adoption book
that would completely tell his story. I kept running across
something called a "life book." Every child has a unique story about his or her birth, but
for an adopted child, it is often quite detailed and very distinctive.

So I went down to the local craft store
and started picking out stickers, trying
to avoid those with clip art of storks
and pregnancy quotations. Eventually,
I started creating my own scrapbook
overlays with transparencies so I could
have professional looking pages about
the journey from "the wait" to the
Adoption Day celebration. Now I can't
imagine that I nearly passed by the
idea of scrapbooking his story and
having missed out on this joy.

Why did I think it was vital to
scrapbook about my child's
adoption?

1. Adoptive moms can be total strangers, but quickly become best friends over sharing
our own experiences of choosing to adopt to the day we brought our child home. The
stories of our children, from their perspective, are just as special! It can be easy to take
the simple route and buy a book where you fill in the blanks, but it's impossible to fill in
all the pages, because, for example, it may depend on if your child was adopted
internationally or domestically. Does she know her birthfather or not? It's hard to read our
child her story when there are blank pages (and kids always ask about those blank pages.)

A bonus is that when you scrapbook the album, it can be perfectly timed for your child's
understanding of his or her story, depending on the age and what you have shared. As
your child gets older, he will ask more questions. You can easily add a page that answers
this right into the book. Recently my son has asked, "What would you have done if God