If you’re looking to purchase lifebook supplies,
scroll past the quotes to check out some of our favorites!

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.
-Richard Bach

If a child is born and raised in a home that is loving and nurturing, where there is complete truth about who we are, you can’t give a child any greater place from which to fly.
-Amanda Bearse

Time and experience have taught me a priceless lesson: Any child you take for your own becomes your own if you give of yourself to that child. I have born two children and had seven others by adoption, and they are all my children, equally beloved and precious.
-Dale Evans

We look at adoption as a very sacred exchange. It was not done lightly on either side. I would dedicate my life to this child.
-Jamie Lee Curtis

I realized at the start that whether a child is biological or adopted, one does not know all the ingredients in the package. That is what growth is all about. A child is the slowest flower in the world, opening petal by petal, revealing the developing personality within.
-Robert Klose

Somehow destiny comes into play. These children end up with you and you end up with them. It’s something quite magical.
-Nicole Kidman

Adoptive Mom?
I am Mom.
I need no other label or prefix.
-Joanne Greco

It has been said that adoption is more like a marriage than a birth: two (or more) individuals, each with their own unique mix of needs, patterns, and genetic history, coming together with love, hope, and commitment for a joint future. You become a family not because you share the same genes, but because you share love for each other.
-Joan McNamara

By choice, we have become a family, first in our hearts, and finally in breath and being. Great expectations are good; great experiences are better.

-Richard Fischer

People ask me. “What about gay adoptions? Interracial? Single Parent?” I say. “Hey fine, as long as it works for the child and the family is responsible.” My big stand is this: Every child deserves a home and love. Period.
-Dave Thomas

Looking for more adoption quotes?

Adoption Sticker Medley Use this Adoption sticker medley on page layouts, creative frames, handmade cards, gift tags and more! Price: $1.99

My Family, My Journey: A Baby Book for Adoptive Families This lovely keepsake album contains sections to record all the joyful milestones and cherished family moments that mark a new baby’s life, pages to chart the child’s unique journey, as well as over 60 stickers you can use to customize the family tree pages. Price: $5.08

My Adoption Celebration Scrapbook My Adoption Celebration Scrapbook is packed with pages that are ideal for recording special times spent with loved ones. Price: $15.56

Adoption Scrapbook Baby Album This 20-page scrapbook album comes with 15 8×8 transparency overlays along with a coupon for 5 free overlays at the publisher’s web site. Price: $55.00

Adoption Is Love Cardstock Stickers A wonderful sheet of heavyweight cardstock stickers depicting the joy of adoption. Acid and lignin-free, and archival safe. Price: $1.32

Framework Adoption Accents These are colorful, lightweight chipboard embellishments designed to complement photos and add dimension to scrapbook pages, homemade greeting cards, and other craft projects. Price: $1.89

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I have four children. Two are adopted. I forget which two.”
-Bob Constantine

Every baby needs a lap.”
– Henry Robin

“I didn’t give you the gift of life,
But in my heart I know.
The love I feel is deep and real,
As if it had been so.
For us to have each other
Is like a dream come true.
No, I didn’t give you The gift of life,
Life gave me the gift of you.”
– Unknown

“Adoption is when a child grew in its mommy’s heart instead of her tummy.”
– Unknown

“Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone,
but still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
you didn’t grow under my heart, but in it.”
– Unknown

“Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“There are no unwanted children, just unfound families.”
– The National Adoption Center

“I did not make you in my own image;
I created you from the imagery of my heart.
– Nancy McGuire Roche

“However motherhood comes to you it’s a miracle.
– Valerie Harper

Blood, a family does not make,
Nor the candles on a birthday cake.
Only love from the heart,
Causes a family to start.
– Ron Gentle, an adoptive father

Adoption Quotes: Part Two
Adoption Quotes: Part Three

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Here are some adoption life book ideas to get you started. Some may apply to your adoption and family, while others may not. How did you create your child’s life book? Tell us in a comment.

~ Why you decided to adopt
~ Why you chose a specific country
~ The process you went thru
~ Those who helped you with the process
~ Copies of paperwork that you might want to include
~ Agency letterhead
~ The referral call & what you did when you got it
~ Referral photos & other photos you receive (be sure to write down all those emotions you felt when you saw the photos)
~ Medical exam info
~ What you did during the wait to keep busy
~ Your child’s name – who named them, significance, how decided upon, etc
~ Their room you fixed up for them
~ Preparing your home
~ Family trees (both your family tree and birthfamily info & pictures, if any is known). If you want to wait before sharing more detailed birthfamily info with your child you could put these pages in a separate private album and let your child decide if they want to add them to their album, etc or you add them once you have discussed these issues with your child. Whatever you and your child are most comfortable with.
~ Pictures of your child that you received during the process.
~ Information about their birth place during this timeframe – significant events, stats on what life was like at the time of their adoption, relevant articles, etc
~ A newspaper from the date they were born
~Picture of you ready to embark on your journey to meet or bring your child home.
~ Travel itinerary
~ Ticket stubs
~ Brochures of places you visited
~ Something from the hotels you stayed at, etc.
~ Notable events & people from your trip
~ Pictures from your trip
~ Pictures of the orphanage, caretakers, foster family, foster family home, birth location
~ adoption quotes
~ adoption poems
~ Your first family picture.
~ Your feelings on finally meeting your child.
~ Information your child’s foster family or caretakers share about your child.
~ Your court appearances or visa appointments.
~ First day in their new home.
~ Adoption timeline.
~ Copies of any adoption announcements you placed.
copyright 2007 Joanne Greco

From the Forever Parents adoption forums:

** I combined my son’s lifebook with his scrapbook. It starts with a couple of pictures of hub and me waiting anxiously for him to arrive. The next pictures show the social worker walking into the house with him. There are lots of pictures of our first hour or so as a family. Then, we have the adoption celebration with the adoption agency. I included captions for each picture to explain who everyone was, what was said, etc. Then it moves on to the typical newborn kind of pictures until he reaches 18 days old, which is when we got ICPC approval to go home. My son was wearing a “Going Home” outfit before we got in the car. And then there are the “It’s a Boy” balloons and decorations that we saw when we drove home. (Our families waited to decorate the house until we arrived home so our son and I could actually see the decorations.) After that, it moves on to a typical scrapbook showing his life chronologically.
 

** My son LOVES to look at his scrapbook. He asks questions about the adoption ceremony. I included it because his adoption was a part of his history. I don’t ever want him to have a “moment” where he “learns” that he was adopted. Incorporating the adoption ceremony into his scrapbook makes his adoption a part of his history — no more and no less.

** I scrapbooked my own “Lifebook” and made it up myself. It reads more like a normal photo album in the way that at the beginning is his birth (bfamily incl.) and goes through his first year of life (so far). I used a separate baby book to record his milestones and it’s not terribly detailed apart from that. It does include an adoption section (by Hallmark). I don’t think that anything that you buy already made will satisfy everyone so that’s why I made my own “Lifebook”. I would have done the exact same thing if I had given birth so I don’t look at it as an adoption thing and give it the label of “Lifebook”, but something I would have done no matter what.

::: Shop for lifebook products in our Adoption Shop! :::

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To give them what I never had heals me. Some days I look at them and almost start to cry. I think, How can I love them more than I did the day before? But it keeps growing.
-Rosie O’Donnell

My adoption was treated as a celebration.
-Michael Reagan

I didn’t give you the gift of life, life gave me the gift of you!

One sought for you a home that she could not provide;
The other prayed for a child and her hope was not denied.”

Too many children in foster care are falling through cracks. Be a hero — take the time learn about adoption today.
-Bruce Willis

When you became our child, our lives interwined forever.

It is not flesh and blood but the heart
which makes us fathers and sons.
-Schiller

Small child
once you were a hope, a dream.
Now you are a reality.
Changing all that is to come.
A love to hold our hearts forever.
-Charlotte Gray

Our ties seem so deep, coming from some faraway dark womblike place, that they can be no different nor less than those of the biological parent.
-Nan Bauer Maglin

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