More pages from the bright pink lifebook

I keep meaning to post more information about Ro and Ree’s lifebook, and then, well, life just gets crazy. It’s actually finished (at least for now), and the girls tote it all over the place. They like to say "It tells the story of how we were born in China and how we became a family," which pretty much nails it. And they frequently look through the binder, point out fave areas, and ask new questions, which is exactly what we hoped.

Ro and Ree’s lifebook is just under 50 pages now. After procrastinating on this project for four years, I just had to do it already and stop obsessing about design choices and how to make it look perfect. So I wrote it in Microsoft Word and printed the pages out on our computer. And the funny thing is that it ended up being absolutely perfect for us. Each page is in a plastic sheet protector, so Ro and Ree can enjoy the book, girlhandle it, spill on it, take it outside, basically do whatever they want with it. If any page gets ruined or they want additional information added, I just print that one out again.

Hey I’m by no means a lifebook expert, but when you’re writing this kind of book don’t forget:
- This is your kiddo’s story, so start it with his/her birth, not your adoption process 
- Make sure this is the story of your child, not the story of your adoption experience (Eg: Say what your child was doing/wearing/saying/ eating/holding on family day, don’t just say how you felt about becoming a family)
- Include at least one picture or graphic on each page (trust me, the text-only pages will be totally ignored) 
- Include interactive items and questions throughout the book (questions about maps, calendars, or photographs are fun)

Here are some close-up pages from our book, in case anyone needs some ideas. Feel free to use any of this wording, the folks who shared lifebooks with me and the forums I joined were so helpful and I appreciated every single person who said “Use this, it works.” The pages aren’t consecutive (they’re just a few highlights):

Here’s the outline I ended up with. The girls love scanning the TOC to find what they’re looking for and then flipping to the right page:

Another adoptive parent sent me the wording for this page and it was so simple and perfect for this age:

We have a world map page and also this country page:

This is Ree’s favorite page. She brought the lifebook to school for sharing, showed everyone this page and explained about Hubei, then passed out sesame treats:

One of my favorite blog comments ever was when I was asking how to approach this subject and one commenter said something like “The first time I ever used the term birthmother I almost fainted, but it gets easier, I promise.” And boy was she right.

You can google any date and find a calendar image to use like this one. The girls get a kick out of it:

We were so lucky that the disposable camera we sent to China came back filled with pictures from the foster family. Priceless:

I didn’t have a photo for this page and thought sticky-note images would jazz up an otherwise text-heavy page. Now it’s one of the girls’ faves:

If you’re stuck on making a lifebook for your kiddo, hopefully these sample pages, or some of this wording, or even the idea that you can do a binder instead of a daunting graphical book will help. Thanks to everyone who helped in this project by sharing your lifebooks and your words with me – your help was invaluable.

PS: If you’d like to see more posts on this, click Lifebooks in the menu bar at the top of this page. Also, this is an extremely personal book, so if you don’t like our wording, our layout, or our content choices, please keep your opinions to yourself and just use them to make your own lifebook wonderful.

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Post #30. Holy moly, I actually did 30 posts in 30 days!!!!! Thank you so much for checking in on us this month and for all the wonderful comments. This spring fling has gotten me out of my blog funk and I will definitely be posting more often now. Thank you also to the other rockin’ spring fling bloggers who joined me in this quest. If I’d been doing this on my own there is no way I would have hit 30 posts: And babies make four…, Another Journey, Birdie and the Queen Bee, Catherine’s Chatter, Diary of a Nouveau Soccer Mom, Dragonflies, Journey to Motherhood, Koprowski Kids, Life with L and M (julialaine.net), Love and a Little Craziness, Mindful of Mine, Moments with Maisie, No Ordinary Family, One Plus One Equals Four, Our Boy and His Cricket, Searching for Sophie, Spectacular S, Three Kids = Chaos, To Vietnam and China, We’re Here.

The lifebook: “good enough” is great!

I haven’t posted about Project Lifebook in a while, and I’ve made a whole bunch of progress on it recently, so here’s an update.

The book is 90% done and the simple binder format (the one I picked so I would focus on actually working on the project rather than obsessing endlessly over design) is the cat’s meow. It’s cool because I can change things easily and also because as soon as it was “good enough” I could print it out and let the girls start manhandling it. TubaDad and I have read it to Ro and Ree over and over again (at their request) and each time they ask for different things to be added (usually more pictures). I also keep seeing areas that I want to add to, and it’s simple to just write a new page and slip it in the binder. And the girls really enjoy seeing new pages pop up.

Anyhow, they both love it and want to bring it to school for sharing day. I think it helps them to ask questions that wouldn’t otherwise come up and to feel more secure about their beginnings, which were two of our main reasons for wanting a lifebook for Ro and Ree. The other reason was to help TubaDad and I get comfortable with their story, the words we wanted to use, and how to communicate tougher concepts. (Concepts like birthparents, which, I’m happy to say, I can now talk about without stammering and stuttering and sounding like a nervous idiot. So practice really does make perfect in this area.)

I ended up with this outline, and included simple titles that the girls can read. They’re already adept at scrolling through this table of contents to find what they want and then turning to the right page. The titles in the table of contents are also repeated as page titles inside the book for easy skimming:

The items in red in the TOC (and throughout the book) are pieces I’m still working on. And all of the information and writing is geared toward five-year-olds, specifically OUR five-year-olds.

They like the pages with interactive details, or things that they can do, like the world map page, the 2005 calendar page, or naming who’s who in this page:

And they quickly notice the areas I’ve left in red saying “scan from original referral doc” and the like. Oops. Ro likes to point out how long the red sentences have been there (she’s counting) and suggest that I really need to just get it done.

They like to hear minute information – details about the country they were born in or what they did when we met. They never tire of repeating the tiny details that I’ve tried to capture like favorite foods, funny things they did, etc. Here’s the first page of the Family Day section:

They think it’s hilarious to point to this picture below and say that we couldn’t believe they didn’t nap until landing time on the monstrously long trip home from China. And it makes TubaDad and I laugh to point to the “Welcome to the United States” picture that my dad snapped illegally in the airport when we all landed. Hm, I’m noticing a typo or two in the below page – good thing I can just rip that one page out of the binder and replace it! Heh.

Anyhow, if you want to do a lifebook for your sweet kiddo, but are overwhelmed thinking about where to begin, you’re not alone. It’s a hard project to get your arms around. The only advice I have is to just start writing, whichever part you feel most comfortable with. And you’ll be surprised at how it just comes together. It really is worth the time and effort. Ours isn’t going to win any design or writing awards, but you know what? It’s just fine. And, most importantly, in Ro and Ree’s words:

Ree: I like that it has mostly all the stuff that’s true about us.
Ro: I like that it shows everything that we did in life.
Ree (when asked why other kids would want lifebooks): Maybe it’s because they want to know how their family became.

Wow. That last sentence? Well I really couldn’t say it any better than that.

* PS: I originally planned to write two completely separate lifebooks, but almost all of the initial information, pictures, etc was identical, so it didn’t make sense. Once completed, I’ll make two copies (with some personalization).

A little bit of progress on the lifebooks, but not enough

I'm still dragging my feet on the actual writing part of these lifebooks. Why do I do that? As soon as something is the tiniest bit hard, I find a million "but, what if..." excuses to avoid working on it. Well, I'm rejecting the "what if it sucks, I can't start until I have it exactly right" excuse right now and just going to go with this outline that I've been kicking around. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to start with: 1. Date / Letter to child (this is the story of you...) 2. How families are formed (include kid-friendly definition of adoption) 3. It all started in china / World map 4. Before you were born, you grew in a special place (O'Malley words) / Your birthdate 5. Chinese zodiac (your birth year and other family members’ years) 6. Info about China (also include many of our favorite things come from China) 7. Your city 8. Why you were placed for adoption 9. Pictures of you as a baby and stories of date found 10. Orphanage information / Chinese name information 11. Foster family information 12. Process of adoption (from baby's point of view) 13. Orphanage director took steps to find a forever family / Finding ad 14. Monthly pictures for that first year (we received an album full of pics when we adopted the girls) 15. Adoption paperwork / What we did in the adoption process 16. Referral day 17. Choosing your name (american, chinese, last name) / Getting ready for the trip to China 18. Flying to China (grandparents came too) 19. Meeting the family for the first time (include details interesting to child) 20. Signing the papers / pledging and promising 21. Final adoption process and medical checkup 22. China experience 23. Travel group / Red couch photo(s) 24. Plane ride home / Family thoughts 25. Our promise, our family, we are the lucky ones Different pieces of this outline come from all over: I've signed up for the Asialifebooks.org online group, have purchased a used copy of Bath O'Malley's LifeBooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child, and have been privileged to view a few precious copies of lifebooks people have written for their children (thank you thank you thank you!). Last week, I took Ro and Ree to the store and let them pick out their own 3-ring binders that will house their initial lifebooks. (Ro chose a multicolor striped one, and Ree chose an all-pink one, if anyone's curious.) So I am ready to write and to gather pictures/documents! My goal is to knock out 2-4 spreads a week. Hey maybe double that if TubaDad isn't traveling. First two spreads/topics for this week are "Letter to child (this is the story of you...)" and "How families are formed (include kid-friendly definition of adoption)." So, I'd love to hear the wording that worked for you to: * Introduce this book to your child * Say how families are formed * Say what adoption is (in a simple, single sentence that a kiddo can understand and maybe even repeat to his/her friends) And if I figure out anything great, I'll share that in my next post. Until then, here's to some prolific writing!

Lifebooks: that first step is a doozy

Every journey starts with a single step, right? So here's my first step toward completing those lifebooks for Ro and Ree. I've gathered resources and tips and made the initial print/layout decisions—wahoo! Now I'm no lifebook expert (seriously, I'm about as far as you could get from one, and will probably do a million things that cause angst among the real experts), but I've done a bunch of research, am determined to make regular progress on these valuable books, and am happy to share experiences along the way in case it helps anyone else. Alrighty then, here's my take on this project so far: TIPS 1. Just start! Stop obsessing about what it's going to look like, where to start, and exactly how you're going to layout the pages. Some people, many people in fact, write a whole lifebook without "designing" one single page. Ok, that stuff might not seem important to some, but it makes a control-freak like me feel a little better and gives me a kick in the butt to just close my eyes and leap. 2. Words first (a personal decision): Based on #1 (and knowing my extreme tendency to procrastinate by playing with graphics and photos for hours without doing a lick of writing), I've decided to start with simple lifebooks created on my computer in Microsoft Word. I'll figure out the photos I want for each page, but I'm not going to worry about graphics, embellishments, photo placements/treatments, or anything fancy for this first round. I'm going to print the pages out myself, and put them in three-ring binders. This will let me test things out with the girls, fix things that aren't working, and not get hung up on making the lifebooks look or sound perfect right out of the gate. Once I'm reasonably happy with them, I'll load everything into Picaboo (one of the online photobook companies) and take the final step of tackling the nitty-gritty layouts and printing some nice, beautiful books. If you don't obsess over graphics and whatnot like I do, just ignore this tip and do everything at once (words + design). 3. Don't Strive for Perfection: You don't have to make everything perfect or include every single thing you could possibly think about. There are some basic things you want to include in your lifebook, and you probably have that information at your fingertips: your child’s birth and birthplace, her birthparents, the reason she was placed for adoption, orphanage/foster care, how your family was formed (the adoption process), the day you met, and how she now fits into your family. Any additional information from there is a bonus. So relax, and start with the basics. 4. It's *Her* Lifebook: A lifebook is your child's story. It should be written for her, owned by her, and told from her point of view. Make sure this is the story of your child, not the story of your adoption experience. As one example, the lifebook really, really needs to start with your child's birth, not with your desire to have a family. Also, don't be afraid to get your child involved in the process—one easy way is by incorporating her handwriting or illustrations in parts of the lifebook. 5. Don't Make Things Up: The lifebook should be truthful, based on fact and not assumption. RESOURCES Books/Guides: • Beth O'Malley's LifeBooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child (I ordered a used version from Amazon, and really like the sample pages included in the book) • Kay Graap's Lifebook Writing Guide Online Lifebook Groups: • Asialifebooks.org: a members-only forum you can join that helps through the whole writing/assembling process (I joined this one and the wealth of info is kind of staggering; I particularly appreciate the information about how to approach the really hard topics) • Chinadigitalscrapbooks.com: a members-only forum that helps with the graphics side and also has many examples Sites Where You Can Create a Photobook: • Blurb • iPhoto: Mac only • Kodak Gallery • Picaboo: this is the one I'm going to use because I like that you can use any photo as a page background and I like the one-click ability to add embellishments like thumbtacks/brads/tape/accents/etc. to the corners of your photographs • Shutterfly • Smilebooks • Snapfish Scrapbooking Supplies/Templates/or Graphics: • Bright Jade quick pages: based on the outline provided in Kay Graap's lifebook writing guide • Scrap and Tell: this site also has some example layouts • Digital-scrapbook-kits.com: digital scrapbooking kits about Asia • My Story Lifebooks: a complete Shutterfly lifebook template that you can upload to Shutterfly and customize • Note: I would love to add to this section, so if you have a fave source for graphics or supplies, please let me know. Companies Who Will Write and Illustrate a Lifebook for You: • Dream Kidz • Little Lotus Creations • My Story Lifebooks HOMEWORK (Heh heh) Now there are two pieces of homework this week (for anyone who wants to power through this lifebook project along with me). • Review the resources and make a decision about how you want to proceed. Do you want to do a simple printout in a 3-ring binder, do an online digital book, handmake a paper scrapbook, or hire a company to interview you and then make the lifebook for you? Play around with a few of the options and sites to see if they really do what you want. • Join any lifebook groups that interest you, grab any books you might need, and read through the material—get familiar with their recommendations. Start an "idea list" and jot down any ideas that appeal to you. In the meantime, I'm going to be looking at a few more sample lifebooks and working on a final (well, really semifinal, oh the wishywashyness) content outline. After that, I'll tackle 2-3 spreads at a time. If you've already made the initial design/resource decisions and are ready to start working on your content outline, here are some sample outlines to spark those creative juices. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions about these outlines, or see some more of your lifebooks (my email address is in the sidebar if you feel like sharing). SAMPLE OUTLINE #1 (from the Beth O'Malley workbook): Your birthdate Birthplace and chinese name Before you were born, you grew in a special place Birthmother/father Reasons for adoption China Finding place Orphanage What we were doing in the meantime Referral day Flying to China Meeting you First day together Flying home/arriving home SAMPLE OUTLINE #2: This is the story of you Your birthdate Chinese zodiac (your birth year and other family members' birth years) China (many of our favorite things come from China) Where were you born? Birthparents Who do you look like? Reason for adoption Orphanage Your name Foster family Your city What the CCAA did to find you a family Our petition to the CCAA Referral day Traveling to China Family day Your new name (american, chinese, last name) Official paperwork China experience Our promise Cheers, and thankyouthankyouthankyou to everyone who is helping with this project. I'm unclenching and breathing easier now that I'm not alone with this. And when (notice that I said "when" not "if") I do something lifebook-related that you think is the most idiotic thing ever, let me know, but please be kind because I really do have good intentions and tender feelings.

Let's talk lifebooks, shall we?

Have you made a lifebook for your child? You know, the kid-friendly book that tells her whole story in words and pictures—it tells about her birth, her country, what adoption is, information about her birth parents and the reason for leaving them, foster parent information, information about your family and how she joined your family, etc.

Well I hate to admit this, because I am a huge believer in lifebooks, but I still haven't started them for Ro and Ree yet. I know how valuable they are, I know that working on them is a great way to get comfortable with the questions your child is going to ask and the answers you want to give, and I know what a great tool they can be for instigating meaningful conversations and for helping your child feel comfortable with her story. I know all that, have known it for at least a year now, and still I've managed to neglect this important project.

Well this procrastination is now ending. Y'all are my witnesses, I WILL start those lifebooks now, and I WILL finish them in an expedient fashion. No more excuses. And I welcome any help you can offer, whether you've already finished a book, are just working on a lifebook right now, or are thinking of starting one someday. Maybe we can help each other. I've added Lifebooks as a topic to the navigation bar that runs across the top of this page. If you click on that tab, you'll be able to see any posts I've done about lifebooks (starting with this one measly post), and I plan to add information to that section about resources, outlines, tips, and any other things that might be helpful. I'd also like to get your advice on one to two questions/topics per post (I've got a million questions, but will try to focus).

So today's questions are:  

1. What resources have you found to be helpful in working on your lifebook? Web sites, books, newsletters, classes, Yahoo groups, sources for graphics, etc.  

2. What format did you use for your lifebook? Did you go with a service that assembled everything for you and provided the outline, graphics, layout, and printing (and if so, who?); or did you do the layout yourself, using your own words, photographs, and home printer; or something else entirely? This might seem like a small thing, but deciding this is one of the first steps for me—I get so dang paralyzed by the small decisions that I end up taking no action at all.

Next topics for discussion, and things that I'm working on right now, will include an outline of content and age-appropriate definitions of adoption, but those are posts for another day. Thanks for your help!