Life Boxes

During our parenting classes, we learned that foster and adoptive parents are encouraged to create a "life book" for their foster kids, which is a history of who they are, where they have lived, and what has happened in their lives that we have been a part of.  For many foster and adopted children, there are large gaps in their personal history, of which they have no memory and sometimes no means of finding out information from anyone else.  Just imagine how you would feel if your parents had no photos of you as a baby, no memories of what you were like, no idea of your medical history, etc.  My mom was a prolific photographer and meticulously recorded all of her photographic moments in chronological order, in a series of photo albums that now take up an entire wall in her office.  It's wonderful to be able to go back and look through them, not only to see pictures of myself, but also other family members, the places I lived and visited, pets, adventures, and so on.

Foster kids often don't have a history like that, unless their foster parents take the time to record their history.  So it's highly encouraged for foster families to take pictures, write down stories, or scrapbook about their foster kids.  Ideally, these life books would travel with the children as they move from one home to the next, so that they will always have some recorded history of their childhood.

I'm in the process of creating a life box for each child, which will contain photos, stories, and special objects from their past.

We are so lucky that Valentino and Victoria had foster parents who really loved them and did take the time to record their history.  The abuelos, who cared for Victoria since birth, recently made copies of all their photos of her as a baby, which I've now compiled into a book for her.  I also make a point to write down the stories they tell me about her infancy and first year.  Abuela gave me the little baby outfit that she wore home from the hospital, so that went into the box too.

Valentino's history is not as well chronicled.  He went into foster care at the age of sixteen months, so I don't have any photos or information about his life before that.  This makes me sad, but there really isn't anything I can do about it, so I'm doing my best to put together his history from foster care onward.  I've been in touch with his first foster mom, who is creating a scrapbook for him with photos of his life with her family.  He will receive a copy of the book that I created for Victoria, which also contains some pictures of him- although not as many, as he lived with the abuelos for about half the time that Victoria did.  I'm also saving some special toys and a blanket that were given to him by his first foster mom.  I was so glad the first time she came to our house because she went into the kids' room with me and pointed out all of the items that were important to him as a baby.  Now I'll be sure to save those for him.

Lastly, I'm including some things from their first year with us.  An invitation to the baby shower that my friends threw in their honor, the congratulatory cards our family and friends sent to us upon our happy news, their birthday and Christmas cards from the first year, and I'll be making a copy for each child of a photo book I made from their first year with us.

I feel pretty proud of myself for doing this now.  It's something that would be really easy to procrastinate and put off for another day.  But I'm afraid if I wait, I'll forget important details.  So now I'm well underway with this important project, and I hope it will be meaningful to them later on.