Genea is "star of the week" at school, and we can send photo's to be put up on the wall along with some things she likes and basic family information. This is the first time we have had a school issue come up related to her adoption. I have maybe 5 photo's of her up until the age of 4. There is a small album that a day care provider put together of her from a time frame across a couple months. Another burst of about 12 pictures of the original adopting family in the week before she came to us. That is probably more than a lot of people have who have adopted older kids. But it still makes me mad. It is not fair and it is not right and it pisses me off. And I feel like a 5 year old myself, whining about it like that.
I love baby pictures. It blows my mind how different people look from the time they are born and into adulthood. I enjoy looking at my own even. There are pictures of my mom when she was in grade school and she looks just like Genea does now! My older half- sister has only 2 or 3 pictures of her life into grade school. All the pictures of her were burned up in a house fire. The few left actually have scorch marks. Whenever the subject of childhood pictures comes up, she mentions this, 40 some odd years later it is still enough of a factor in her life that she talks about it to this day!
I guess I am probably lucky to have that little naked baby picture. But I think it just sucks ass that it is the only one on the planet.
I know that this is a boring post but it is late and I have been putting together a collage of photos of Genea to take to school tomorrow and put up on that wall. I bulked it up with photos from the past year and a half. So I am tired, and this is on my mind.
About a month ago Genea and I were playing around with her hair. I call it her crazy rock star hair because it is wildly curly and shoots up all over. Her hair is actually longer than halfway down her back but sits just below her shoulders when dry. We decided to straighten her hair with my flat iron for fun. WOW what a difference, she looks like a teenager!
I don't have any baby pictures of either of my boys. Nothing before, oh, say age 4. With Tara I have a handful of pics and one when she was a baby. I make up for it big time, taking 50 pictures of the same scene about every day :)
ReplyDeleteI don't have any pictures of Phillip before age 5. It bothered me so much that a few months ago I had a photo regression done of him as an infant and another one as a toddler. I think they turned out fabulous. I have hundreds of baby photos of CJ so at least Phillip has two of his own now.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the pics. The only ones I have of J are the most pitiful things you've ever seen. Only one baby picture and the rest will make you drop to your knees crying.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any baby photos of Katya. I have a handful of pics from around age 5 from the orphanage and that's the youngest. It's very sad.
ReplyDeleteI actually had an idea about a charity awhile back and I've been thinking about how to make something like that come to life: to have volunteers take photos/do photo shoots with orphanage kids and start albums that they can keep/take with them.
photo regression is a cool idea- I had no idea you could do that! A charity for kids to have a photo album is a great idea too. I know a lot of kids in foster care are supposed to have 'life books' but I have yet to meet a kid who has one.
ReplyDeleteIt just sucks.
I used phojoe.com. Phillip's regression photo is posted on my blog if you want to check it out. It's under the September posts.
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ReplyDeleteThe first year the kids were placed with me my then 6 AND 7 year old had to do life timelines for their class(both their teachers team taught even though they were in different grades) on posterboard and present it to the class. Parents were invited.
ReplyDeleteI have very few baby pictures of the kids because their mother didn't take any. I have some of them when they had been to my house and I didn't want to send them because it's truly all they have.
So, I thought since it was a kids project it would be ok for them to draw pictures of their life. A lot of it they made up. I thought they did a great job.
Then we got to the class. Apparently, it was a parent assignment because the posterboards we saw were ridiculous. It was obvious the children hadn't worked on them and that the parents had done them.
There was one posterboard that made me cry. They were twin girls and the mother had started their timeline with the wedding picture and progressed in that much detail. I cried because of how much my kids had missed and because I know how looking at that posterboard and not having that myself made me feel.
I know those projects are meant to be fun but I hate them.
As others have said, I don't have baby pics of any of my 3 boys and when my oldest had to do the family time line in 1st grade, he had a really great teacher that dealt nicely with his lack of baby pics. Now that I do foster care, I take hundreds of pics of the children that come into my home. The last 2 babies that came through and then were adopted from my home had a very nice baby album by the time they left.
ReplyDeletegosh i feel for you, i have tons of sarah at 4 month on but before that nothing not one. i thought that was bad enough, for you it must be terrible. i am glad that you have one little photo at least. you should copy it a few times to make sure that it doesn't get lost. you can take it to a photo place and they will do it.
ReplyDeleteTake care and its not boring its interesting,plus i like it when you put photos of your girls up...and yes the photo of her looks like a teenager...scary glimpse into the future!!
I had the same issue at school. In addition to that, they give out the class bear to live with us for a week, I was not aware of any of this until the dang bear came home on a Thursday, with a note stating that we had to bring him back Tuesday with baby pictures of our kid.
ReplyDeleteWe are the 7th parents our boy has had, and had no pictures of him anywhere near the baby stage, so we had the issues there. Then we had to give the bear back, our kid thought he was going to be adopted into our house, drama, tears. For weeks I had to reassure him that even if the bear didn't stay, that he was there forever. Hopefully the state doesn't screw that up.
After three years we finally located ONE picture that his mama had of him. It is him in the isolet swaddled, you can see no portion of him, it does calm him though.
I just feel so bad for these kids. I'll go back to posting on my own blog now:)
Look at all the people that are discovering your awesomeness!
ReplyDeleteYou rock! I'm so glad others are finding that out too!