“To our future little person…”

This is how we began the introduction in a photo book called “Our Adventures in Waiting: 2010-2011” that we created for our child. You can see the photo book in the post below. We’ll share some of the text here since it is hard to read in the online version.

The introduction continues, “We’ve been waiting a long time for you. While we don’t know when you’ll join our family, we know you will be worth the wait and we’ll love you very much. This album is to show you all the things we thought about until there was you.”

The story behind the book is simple. Susan had a Shutterfly coupon which gave her the perfect opportunity to try creating a photo book. At first it was hard to decide on a theme for the book, but then we had the idea to create the book for our future child with photos that we took while we were waiting for him or her to arrive.

Before we decided to adopt, it was rare that we took photographs, especially of just us. However, we quickly realized we needed to take a lot more pictures in preparing for our adoption letter and Facebook page. Sometimes it’s been a struggle to take pictures, but we’re glad that we have them. We appreciate the family, friends, and even kind strangers who have helped us to take these photos.

The 8”x8” hardcover book turned out as wonderful as we hoped. It’s a pleasure to look at it and reflect on all the things we’ve done while we’ve been waiting. Many of the photos such as the ones at the zoo and the Orange County Fair are visual reminders of the places we’re planning to visit with our child. We can imagine him or her enjoying the pandas or the Ice Museum at the fair alongside us. And someday, we hope to share these pictures with our child so he or she will know how much we looked forward to his or her arrival and presence in our lives. We also plan to give copies of future photo books to grandma and our child’s birthmother (if she’s up for that).

The book ends with photos of us trimming our Christmas tree and the text, “Preparing for Christmas 2011 – hopefully you’ll be here next Christmas.” That’s our greatest wish for 2012.