Thursday, January 8, 2009
Update on the Nursery
This is a quick post of pictures of the nursery now that we have it complete. Insert baby here:
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Our Portfolio
If you're caught up with the other posts, then you know that the last step to our domestic adoption process was to submit a family portfolio for potential birthparent(s). I spent about a month piecing our portfolio together. Our agency had given us two other sample portfolios from other families and a few tips, such as:
1.) Make sure that there is no evidence of alcohol anywhere in any picture. This is a big no-no with birthparent(s).
2.) Don't include pictures of me and Michael with our nieces and nephews. It's a bonus to birthparent(s) that we don't currently have children and if they are preliminarily flipping through, looking at the pictures instead of reading, we may get dismissed because they'll think that our nieces and nephews are our other children.
3.) Be sure to include traveling and hobbies.
4.) If there are other adoptions in our family, write about it so the birthparent(s) will know that our family is already experienced with, and accepting of, adoption.
Number 1 was easy. There aren't a lot of pictures of Michael and I that include alcohol anyway. Number 2 was understandable. I did include tons of pics of all of our nieces and nephews, but was careful that they did not contain me and Michael, too. Number 3 was fun - we love traveling and have great hobbies. And I came up with a way to fix number 4. We have one adoptee in our family, and I tried to get his permission to mention it in our portfolio, but he didn't get back to me by submission time. So, since the importance of another adoptee to the birthparent(s) is that it assures them that our family is and will be supportive of this adoption, I figured that we could still portray this through letters from family and close friends to the baby. I sent out an email to all of our loved ones and the response was overwhelming. We received more loving letters to the baby than I ever thought we would get. It ended up taking up 7 pages of the portfolio. It meant so much to me that we had everyone's support and love. I still get teary-eyed when I read them.
Without further ado, here's our portfolio:
(Editor's Note: We tried to embed electronic signatures into our personal letters to the birthparents, but it never looked right. We decided to just actually sign each copy after they were printed. The version here does not have signatures, but Michael's is the first and mine is the second - if you couldn't already tell from the content.)
1.) Make sure that there is no evidence of alcohol anywhere in any picture. This is a big no-no with birthparent(s).
2.) Don't include pictures of me and Michael with our nieces and nephews. It's a bonus to birthparent(s) that we don't currently have children and if they are preliminarily flipping through, looking at the pictures instead of reading, we may get dismissed because they'll think that our nieces and nephews are our other children.
3.) Be sure to include traveling and hobbies.
4.) If there are other adoptions in our family, write about it so the birthparent(s) will know that our family is already experienced with, and accepting of, adoption.
Number 1 was easy. There aren't a lot of pictures of Michael and I that include alcohol anyway. Number 2 was understandable. I did include tons of pics of all of our nieces and nephews, but was careful that they did not contain me and Michael, too. Number 3 was fun - we love traveling and have great hobbies. And I came up with a way to fix number 4. We have one adoptee in our family, and I tried to get his permission to mention it in our portfolio, but he didn't get back to me by submission time. So, since the importance of another adoptee to the birthparent(s) is that it assures them that our family is and will be supportive of this adoption, I figured that we could still portray this through letters from family and close friends to the baby. I sent out an email to all of our loved ones and the response was overwhelming. We received more loving letters to the baby than I ever thought we would get. It ended up taking up 7 pages of the portfolio. It meant so much to me that we had everyone's support and love. I still get teary-eyed when I read them.
Without further ado, here's our portfolio:
(Editor's Note: We tried to embed electronic signatures into our personal letters to the birthparents, but it never looked right. We decided to just actually sign each copy after they were printed. The version here does not have signatures, but Michael's is the first and mine is the second - if you couldn't already tell from the content.)
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