So, I finally am near finishing up the girls life books. I’ve had to add a few photos to the existing layouts as Gene got us some additional photos that I hadn’t expected. We also finally got Marina a regressed baby photo from Phojoe.com and she wanted that added to her “birthday” page.
I decided to do an 8x8 scrapbook for each of them as apposed to the larger sizes, since I knew I would be short on photos in some places and larger pages are harder to fill when you have limited photos. They also fit nicer on book shelves than the larger books. I used the Creating Keepsakes layout magazines to come up with my layouts – I altered them according to the photos I had and I tended to lean towards the more geometric, balanced layouts.
Here is the general table of contents I used:
Cover page – “Your Lifebook”
Your Birthdate
Your Birthparents
Your Birthplace
(here it varied due to the girls life experiences)
Your Childhood- Katya/ Shelter Nadiya- Marina
Your Journey (shelters and orphanages)- Katya
Barvinok Children’s home- Marina/ Oleksandriya Boarding School- Katya
Your German Host Family – Marina
(here it goes back to the same for both girls)
Your Birth Family (still working on clarifying this as it is complicated)
Your Adoption
When I didn’t have photos, I used Flickr.com to find “fake” photos or photos of important objects. For example, Katya remembers riding on her aunt’s pig when she was little, so I found a photo of a little pig and used that in the scrapbook. Or they had some experience in a Ukrainian outdoor market (Rinok) so I found a generic photo of a Rinok and used that.
If your kids are older, talk to them and try to construct a timeline of their life – it may be fuzzy at first, but they will remember more and more as they become more comfortable with you and they start coping with their loss. ** A therapist is a good idea for this as well – not only to bring up memories of their early life, but to SAFELY deal with those memories!** Talk to the kids about things they did in the orphanage – ask about funny stories. These can be focal points in your kids’ life book. If they are younger kids who have been in the orphanage their whole lives, try to take photos of every inch of the orphanage. If you forgot to, or weren’t allowed to, talk to other adoptive parents who adopted from the same orphanage – maybe they have photos they can share.
Also, charity groups are a great resource for photos of the orphanages in Ukraine and possibly your kids! I found a group that had done work in both my girls’ orphanages over the years, and they had photos of my girls when they were younger! I saw the low quality photos on their websites, emailed the group via their “contact us” email on the website, and got a warm response with 20 or so high quality original photos. Peace Corps volunteers are also a good source of photos. Do a Flickr.com search for “Ukraine” “orphans” “orphanages” “children” etc and you will find tons of photos.
