Photo Albums

When it comes to baby books, scrapbooks, photo albums and the like: I stink. I start out with the greatest of intentions but so far the best documenting I've managed to do is this blog. A few weeks ago Sam and I had to go hunting through the photo albums for a baby picture he could use for his 8th grade yearbook. I was so thankful he was born in the era when we actually developed pictures and put them in an album. The three littles are going to be up a creek when we have so search every disk, hard drive and shutterfly to find their pictures.

 

Z and the selfie

 

We have a couple little albums laying around the house that I've put together for birthdays or Father's Day. Since Z has been home I have yet to make a new album. But that is soon to change.

Recently he's been bothered by his absence in the albums. I'm not sure it's the lack of pictures of himself (because he's in frames all over the house) but much deeper. He's piecing timelines together and he's grieving that he hasn't always been here with us. At first he would just ask "how come I'm not in this picture, mama?" I would explain that he wasn't born yet and show him a recent picture. This kiddo, though, he's very bright and pretty soon that explanation was cutting it.

 We are moving on to explaining that during some of those times, even though he was born, he was still in Ethiopia. He doesn't care for that answer either. Some of our conversations are so heartbreaking. I'm cautious of oversharing but needless to say he is working through some hard stuff and figuring out how this all pieces together. We are working hard to help foster a love for his home of birth. We always want him to have a connection and be proud of both his families and countries. These are tricky waters to navigate.

He is only 3. So little to make sense of this all. Most days I can't make sense of it. But he's asking questions and we're answering. He's sharing his feelings and we're doing our best to understand and to guide him to a soft heart.

He has made such tremendous growth in the past year. Both physically and emotionally. The striking change between these pictures almost sucks the air out of me. Because when I look at them I am reminded of the years we missed before. Before 2 1/2 we have no pictures, no memories. No baby books or baby keepsakes for us to hold onto and so many questions left unanswered. These are the hard parts of adoption. While there is so much joy it is not without loss on the other side. So we continue to muddle our way through and hope and pray... and pray some more that we are giving him what he needs. But most importantly that we're pointing him to the One and only that will fill those missing pieces.