I know so so many of you are eagerly awaiting when I’ll finally post about Marlee’s adoption story. And honestly, I’m looking forward to finally being able to share it too. Unfortunately, the truth is adoption is complicated and long and right now we’ve been encouraged not to share too much.

So that’s why you haven’t seen me inundate you with blog posts and photos of our gorgeous little girl. That’s not to say that I haven’t taken tons of photos or done any writing. We had Marlee’s newborn portraits taken professionally while we were in Michigan (photos we are super excited about and I may share in the very near future). And when we got home, I, of course, had to take some portraits of her (and us together) myself. I had my dear friend Julie snap some quick pics of our little family with the dogs. And I’ve been photographing her each month for her baby book which is already full of words and pictures of her life up until this point.

Which brings me to a couple different things I want to share. First, I am so thankful that adoption specific baby books exist! There are tons of different options for baby books out there, but very few I’ve found for adopted babies. And I wanted to be able to document Marlee’s full story, not just the aspects that pertained to her life with us. So I want to give props and a link to our baby book for any other adoptive moms who may be looking for something similar and a huge thank you to my friend Julie who got us this awesome book for our little girl!

Also thanks to Julie for the awesome adoption related story books. It is so important for children to know where they come from and it’s important to start talking about adoption with kids early. So having story books like the ones Julie got us are going to give us a great and easy way to begin introducing the concept to her in a simple and loving way.

Second, Ryan and I take tons of pictures of this sweet little thing every day. And quite honestly, I refuse to let them just sit on my phone or hard drive. So I started looking for an alternative to print these pictures out. You guys know how much I love albums and having all our snapshots in one simple book seemed like a FANTASTIC thing! So I started looking for simple options – nothing that required a lot of work or designing and I found Chatbooks. These are awesome! You can set it up to autofill a book with your pictures and text from facebook or instagram or from your camera’s photo roll. Or you can add photos manually too. This makes it super easy to plug photos in and get a book printed quickly and inexpensively. We made one for Marlee that documents our whole time in Michigan and our conversations with her mama so that someday she can look at this book and see how much her first mom loves her! And this 100+ page book only cost us about $28 with shipping and tax – that’s a pretty great deal in my book!

So yes – I’m sorry there hasn’t been more details about our journey to find Marlee and I’m sorry I’m not blowing away your newsfeed with adorable photographs of Marlee. I do promise though that as soon as we get the green light – you’re going to see a TON of our precious baby girl here. Because she is such a little miracle and brings so much joy to our life and we certainly want to share her joy with all of you!