Preparation while waiting.

Still waiting...papers, papers, papers. Where are all my papers? Still waiting on my home study...maybe the beginning of next week...then send that to immigration and wait, wait, wait...

So in the meantime, RETAIL THERAPY!!!

BOOKS

Here are some of the books I've gotten (hope everyone has stock in Amazon!). These are the kid's book I've bought that deal with adoption and multiracial issues.

CLOTHES

Still only buying stuff on clearance...this kid's already got more dresses than I do! This is only about 1/3 of the outfits I have, these are my top picks. My favorite is the green patchwork dress, bottom left on the first picture.

DOLL

Here is a doll - my Mom actually bought this for me.

"My First Doll" in dark skin--actually a little difficult to find.

LIFEBOOKS

Lifebooks are photo albums, scrap books, or journals documenting the beginnings of an adopted child's life. This includes the country of origin (info about it and the political situation, etc.), the situation surrounding the reasons the child is up for adoption, orphanage or foster home pix, etc. These are meant to be private between the adopted child and their parent...a link to the past to fill in some of the questions (and possibly raise more). I am going to make a lifebook but I'm also going to make an "adoption book" which will be easier to be shared with everyone. It will have lots pictures of things like the plane ride home, meeting the animals, our first meeting in Ethiopia, that kind of thing. These are the two photos albums I chose (the Memories is for the adoption book and the Love one is for the lifebook.

This is the first page of the adoption book...I love my little person hole-puncher...just used "multi-cultural" paper. I'm hoping to get as much done before the adoption as I can (cause time will be limited with a baby in the house)...going to make some pages that will just need pix added later.