Keeping the Boys' Pasts

One of the many things I took away from the various adoption blogs I read and on Beth O'Malley's newsletters about creating lifebooks, was this:

Don't forget that your adopted child had a life before they came into your family.

It seems many adoptive parents have made the mistake of telling the child's life story beginning at "gotcha" day or the day the parents first saw their file.


This came to mind this Christmas as we were decorating the tree.  Each of my birth kids were given an ornament to commemorate their first, second and third Christmases.  



I considered how to commemorate the boys' first Christmases.  Without previous consideration, I may have called this year their "first Christmas," but it wasn't!  Before we met them, Travis lived through 3 Christmases and Tian, 2.  So I began a search for ornaments for the boys.  My first thought was to search eBay for year-appropriate ornaments similar to their older siblings'.  But as I looked, I thought we should find a way to keep their Chinese heritage in the equation.

A search for "Chinese Christmas ornaments" turned up some interesting ideas.  But my affection and wallet landed on these sweet ornaments:


They are pretty small, so I used a fine-point permanent marker to write the year and Christmas number on the bead.  I'm happy with the results!  I hope they will cherish these through the years and be able to reflect on their first two and three years in China.

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