Our Adoption Profile - (and my secret fashion faux pas)

The most enjoyable part of our journey so far was definitely creating our profile. For those of you who do not know - when adopting you have to compile a personal profile of your life and family. This is then given to expecting parents who are considering an adoption plan for their child.
When a baby becomes available for adoption the birthparents specifies their preferences for the forever family that they wishes the baby to go to. Profiles that match these specifications are then presented to the birthparents and they then choose the one that they like most. It is therefor extreamly important and much sweat, tears and effort goes into these profiles as it should be a heartfelt, photo filled, eye catching and creative document.

There are several ways how you can create your profile, the most popular would be creating either a scrapbook or a photobook. I've never scapbooked before so thought that it would be a great challenge and a chance to learn something new. I got a beautiful white leather scrapbook from my SIL, bought some extra pages and accessories and rose to the challenge!

We got the following guidelines from "The Agency" on how to create the profile:

• Obtain a fine looking photo-album, scrapbook or something similar that fits your personality.
• Plan your profile thoroughly before you start writing, pasting and decorating. 
• Must have a minimum of 10 pages.
• You can use names, but no surnames, addresses or contact numbers.
• Use as many photos as possible to tell the story of your life. Use descriptive text next to the photos. Keep in mind however to maintain a balance between the photos and writing within your profile.
• Elaborate about your hobbies, talents, work, religion and reason for adoption.

When planning our profile I decided to divide it into the following categories and work accordingly:

• Cover page - This included a nice photograph of ourselves and a relevant quote (I will reveal the secret of our cover photo to you a bit later in the post)
• A letter to our birthmother
• About us - Our story
• Meet Riaan
• Meet Juanita
• Our lifestyle and occupations
• Our house and surrounds
• Our family and friends
• Our pets
• Our views on parenting
• Conclusion - Our promise 

The most time consuming part was deciding which photographs to use. Having spent almost 10 years of our lives together we captured a lot of memories and it was really hard to choose only a couple. For our cover photo I had a few of the nicest ones set aside and eventually chose a photo that was taken at a friend's wedding. Me and Riaan both had nice new clothes, looked happy - all bushy tailed and bright eyed! However, as I inspected the photo a thunderbolt of realisation hit me right between the eyes. I had my top on the wrong way round!!!!! My cheeks caught fire and I was soooo embarrassed. I spend half an afternoon and a whole evening prancing around in my brand new clothes between a hundred other guests, feeling oh so smug with myself - all of this while wearing my top "agterstevoor om"! How many of the guests actually noticed it, I do not know, but not a sole took a minute to shove me into the ladies room and helped me into my top the right way round. Why I did not realise all by myself that the front is actually the back until a couple of months later I can also not explain. I really really believed at the time that I had it on right and Riaan even assured me that I do look rather lovely... 

So after picking my shameful self up off the floor I turned to photo editor and helped myself into my top the right way round. And I got to use the cover photo that I chose without the worry that the birthparents would laugh themselves to tatters on my behalf. 

Our Profile Cover Photo

 The Original Photo

And at the end of it all I created a beautiful profile of our lives. Me and Riaan got to revisit some great memories and we got to take stock of our lives. My wish is that our profile will end up in the right hands on the right time and that it will make our dream of becoming a family of 3 come true.