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I recently reviewed the book Ten Days and Nine Nights by Yumi Heo here on the Hoping to Adopt blog. In case you missed it (go read), it’s a children’s book written with the intent of helping children already in the home get excited about an upcoming adoption.
It is written from the perspective of a Korean adoption. However, if you know anything about adoption books, you know that this book is unique in itself. Therefore, anything that is creating a dialogue between children and their parents about the prospect of a new sibling via adoption is wonderful. If you’re not adopting from Korea or your child at home is not a girl, you can simply use the book to show what some families do and discuss what your family is planning to do. Even if you aren’t planning on adopting another child yet, if you’re like our family, any books that embrace the diversity of families are a welcome addition to our family library. Seeing as how it is so beautifully illustrated, it’s a lovely addition at that!
And we here at AdoptionBlogs want to help you do that in your own home!
We have three (3!) copies of Ten Days and Nine Nights to giveaway to some very lucky readers. Our giveaway will run through May 12th, the day that the book is available for purchase.
We’re offering you a few different ways to enter this giveaway. Read how!
1. Leave a comment on this post with a tip on preparing children already in the home for an upcoming adoption of a new sibling. This can be specific to your type of adoption (foster, international, domestic, kinship) or general in the sense that it works across the board. You may leave one comment on the blog. (Registration is required to comment.)
2. Blog about this giveaway on your own public blog, linking to this giveaway post. If you choose to do this as well, please leave a comment on this post with the link to your post (can be done in addition to the above comment) so that we know you have blogged about this giveaway.
3. Tweet about this giveaway by copy/pasting the following into your twitter stream:
Win the kid’s book Ten Days & Nine Nights from @AdoptionBlogs by entering here: http://bit.ly/dWK5H Through May 12th!
We’ll keep track of your tweets via mentions and put them in our spreadsheet with the comments here via timestamp so be sure to copy/paste exactly!
For a bonus entry:
4. Follow @AdoptionBlogs on twitter. Leave a comment here so that we can confirm you’re a new follower!
This giveaway will be live through Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:00pm EDT. At that time, we will finish adding last minute entries to the spreadsheet, visit random.org to pull three separate winners (meaning, you can’t win all three books) and work to contact them in short order.
The best part is that we will also be posting an interview with the author, Yumi Heo, on May 12th. Why? May 12th is the day that the book is released! We’ll be celebrating the addition of such a great adoption book to the world by asking the author some important questions while simultaneously gifting readers. It’s win-win for all involved.
If you have any questions about how to enter the giveaway or want some more information about the book, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jennah@adoptionblogs.com. Furthermore, if you have some questions that you’d like me to ask the author, forward them on as well. I’d love for your voice to be heard!
All in all, I hope you enjoy entering this contest. If you don’t win, consider picking up the book. It’s worth it!
Photo Credit: 2009 Yumi Heo.
We have a daughter that will be two at the end of this month and we just brought home an infant boy. To prepare our daughter, we bought her a dark skinned doll (our son is African American and our daughter is Caucasian). We also read a lot of books about new babies coming home and constantly talked to her about how we would need her help when the baby came home (to feed him, change him, bathe him, read to him, etc). We also installed the infant car seat a little early and kept telling her the baby would sit back there with her when he came home. So when we picked up her brother, she really didn’t seem too surprised. Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet LOL!
When we found out about our second adoption, she was already born. So, we tried to help our older daughter (#1) prepare by having her help pick out gifts for her baby sister. She picked out a toy for her sister (and we picked up some books for her at the same time, some of which she received on the day of placement). We brought our all the baby things that were in storage and tried to make it real, while trying not to overdo things, in case #2’s mom changed her mind.
Mostly though, we talked to her about her own adoption and emphasized to her that we loved her and would always love her. We also made a big deal out of her helping us with Baby Sister and encouraged her to bond with her sister during tummy time. They are very close to each other and best friends. I think it helped that we tried to stifle jealousy by giving #1 lots of attention and positive reinforcement during the adjustment period.
We are just getting started with the adoption process. I have enjoyed reading the other comments left.
So far with our two and a half year old son we have discussed what being a brother and sibling means. We have talked about how Uncle Adam is Mommy’s brother and Auntie Ans is Papa’s sister. How when we both were younger that we had lots of fun having a sibling. We have also discussed what a baby will mean within our family.
As we get closer to having someone join our family, we plan on setting up the new room together. We also plan on trying to spend some one on one time with our son during the adjustment period and also doing activities as a family.
We have one child through adoption and will someday have another blessing in our home, preferably another child who is bi-racial so someone else in the family pictures looks like our little guy. (As opposed to his red-headed, pale-complexion twin cousins
)
Before our second child comes home, I plan on finding age-appropriate ways that our first child can welcome home his sibling: artwork, choosing clothes for his sibling’s trip home, planning special days with our first so he knows he is not forgotten, doing the “I’m the big brother” shirt/mini photo album thing for him to show off his sibling to his friends… without knowing when a second child might enter the picture, it’s hard to think about what will be appropriate at that point in time!
Kelly in Ohio