The Adoption Profile is...

... still a work in progress.
 

Just as I feared, it's taking us forevvvverrrr to get it done. And it's not just because we want it to be the perfect representation of who we are as a couple. We also were told we had to change the format after we thought we were almost finished.



A screen shot of our masterpiece-in-progress.

At first we just though it was a typed 2-page letter with pictures interspersed. So I found lots of examples of "dear birthparent" letters with pictures and got to work. Once we put the mostly finishing touches on that, we found out it's supposed to be more like a picture book with lots of captions and little word blurbs. So our agency let us borrow an example from one of their couples (they've already adopted 4 children!!) as a guidline and we got to work again.


We're using SnapFish to make our profile. You like?

Let me give some advice to those out there who are thinking about adoption but haven't gotten this far yet:

Take lots of pictures! Lots and lots and tons and pounds of pictures!

Of all the components of our profile, pictures have slowed us down the most. I happen to love taking pictures, so we actually had a lot to choose from, but we still had "holes" in our story, pictorally speaking.


My dear husband, summed up in 2 pages.

So this past week has been spent taking the pictures we wish we had already taken.

We needed to take more pictures of our aparment, which wasn't too hard, but we had to clean it first.

Then we needed more pictures of us doing our favorite things: cooking, playing games together, going on walks, etc. Also, not too hard. It just took time to bake cookies and then play a game together and then go for a walk. Oh, and we also needed to find someone to take the pictures for us. More on that in a second.

Then we needed more pictures of us with babies, which has proven to be most difficult, as we don't really know many babies who are readily available as picture props. You'd think my husband, who works at a children's hospital, would have tons of pics with babies and kids, but (rightfully so) they don't allow the hospital staff to take pictures with kids without written consent. So that left us digging through all our old pictures and just settling with low-quality iPhone pics of the two of us with my niece. It's a good thing she's cute.

And unless there's anyone out there who'll let us borrow their baby for a weekend of photographizing in Memphis, that'll just have to do.

I kid mostly, as our profile is supposed to be an accurate representation of John and me. And baby stealers we are not. But it would be nice to be able to show birthparents that we actually do like being around kids.

Finally, we needed some updated "us" pictures. We have a bunch of beeeeautiful professional pictures from our wedding day, but those are 2.5 years old now. And John wasn't rockin' his hipster glasses, long hair, and beard that day. Plus, I'm sure birthparents would like to see me in more outfits that just my wedding gown, even though it was very pretty.

We didn't want to shell out extra money for new professional pictures. While I'm sure they'd be great, we would much rather save the money for pictures of us with our adopted newborn. :)

So we asked a good friend, Rachel, if she'd spend an hour snapping pictures of us using our decent camera and she said yes!! Sure, we bribed her with Mexican food, but I think it was a fair trade.

We thought a cute little park with a pond was a nice backdrop.

We started our photo sesh around 2pm, so the sun was very bright!

We had to face the sun so that we didn't end up with lots of shadows on our faces. 


You may think he's smiling super big, but really he was wincing in pain from brightness of the sun. Hehe.

After some practice, we started to figure out how to smile and keep our eyes open and look cute while staring into the sun.

Switch sides, stand in front of a tree, smile.

We faced away from the sun for a second to get the lake in the background, but the shadowy faces came back.


So we faced the sun again and came up with this cute pose.


Note the sunglasses.

And then we went for a little walk, hand-in-hand.

And then I danced a little because photography is fun, weather is beautiful, and life is good.



Allow me to introduce you to our talented photographer:

Thanks for your help, Rachel! We heart you!

So we're still not done with the profile. We've got some more picture placing and tweaking to do. And we still have to write a short and heartfelt "Dear Birthparent" letter for our first page. But we're hoping to have everything finished by the end of this week. Mostly because: 1.) I don't like this task hanging over me and 2.) SnapFish has a 40% off coupon for photobooks that expires after Friday. A silly reason to finish our profile? Sure. But at least it's motivating me.

And at least we have more pretty pictures to choose from now. One step closer!