Involve Bfamily and/or culture

I'm really interested in reading the responses. :)

Me too! ;)

Anyone have anything to share? We include First families by singing about them, praying about them, talking about them.We discuss my oldest son's first families home country. I haven't figured out how to incorporate anything for my little man yet.

Well, we are actually the same nationalities as our children's bfamilies (wierd how that worked out - I am Polish/Belgian/Hungarian and my husband is English/French/Irish - both kids bfamilies are the same). The only one of any of the parents that "celebrates" their culture is me (my Polish heritage). As far as our every day lives, we do pray for both boys bparents/grandparents at night. I have also made a photo album for each of my boys with all the pics of their bfamilies, including cards, letters, etc. They love looking at them, especially my youngest. His bmom just asked if they could make a scrapbook for him, and I practically screamed yes! I asked her to put in all of her favorite things, foods, movies, etc. so he can compare his interests with hers as he gets older. Just as a cute side story, the other day, my oldest son had a project for kindergarden - he had to make a poster board collage with all of his favorite things (likes, colors, favorite people, places, etc.). I bought an additional posterboard for my youngest son to play with as we worked on AJ's project. My youngest son went into his drawer and pulled out a handful of pics of his bmom and her family from our last trip to the park, and pasted them all over his board. We hung it in his room, and I took a pic of it and sent it to his bmom. She absolutely loved it and so did we!

Awww lovemy2boys, that is very sweet!I guess I have a harder time because I don't have that close relationship with my boys First Moms. I would love to, but it's just not there. With the oldest, there is a language barrier plus right now the agency has lost contact with her. With the youngest, she didn't want to meet and hasn't picked up her pics or letters yet. She did write him the sweetest card that we saved for him and gave him a "my first Christmas" ornament that he gets to put on the tree every year.Thank you for sharing!

Ani, We received ornaments for both of our boys from their bgrandmas when they were born (both of their bdays are in December). I recently asked both boys bmom if they would mind purchasing ornaments for them each year instead of toys (because as you can imagine, 2 December bdays plus Christmas, turns our house into a mini version of Toys R!!!) I asked them to purchase an ornament that is dear to their heart, and the kids can put them on their little tree each year. Then, when they are old enough to move out and be on their own, they will have a super special collection of ornaments.

The cultural/heritage issue is interesting in our family. I was raised to know a very German heritage. DH is from Japan, so obviously there are huge differences in everything from manners to self-image to food. DD is AA from the deep south. What we are trying to do is kind of the melting pot idea. And, of course, we're all Americans. When DD is older we'll travel. For now we have an eclectic dinner table, home and world view. (I'm still trying to get used to seaweed, raw fish, and this funny smelling stuff called furikake. DD loves it.)

Both DH and I are Irish American (he has a little French too -- of course, he is adopted, so god knows exactly what nationalities he is). I have to say that I don't "celebrate" anything in particular about being Irish (unless drinking green beer on St. Patrick's day counts!). DD's birth mom is Irish and Danish. Her birth dad is biracial (three grandparents are black, apparently, not sure what nationality the white grandparent is (he was raised by his grandparents)). To be honest, I don't think they really "celebrate" any kinds of traditions either. I guess my point is is that we are all sort of very "americanized"(good or bad). It is very important to me, however, that DD understands that she is AA and is proud of it (and we read books, have dolls of color, hang out a lot with my best friend and her kid who are biracial, etc.). I read DD her birth book quite a bit and we are talking about her adoption. She has only a "vague" grasp of it right now (she is 2). But the other day, I said: "Who loves you?" thinking she would say "YOU!" and she shouted out her birth parents' names (very cute!). Since we have visits yearly, this is also I guess a way birth parents are "incorporated."

Our daughter is half Hispanic, but does not look it at all. I have thought about going to festivals, etc... but I just have not done it yet.

Well, her bparents are american/caucasian, as are dh and I so.... nothing special to do from a cultural / ethnic standpoint.As far as her birthfamily specifically goes, we just talk about them in the same way we talk about our other extended family members, we show photos, all that good stuff. It's nothing intense or constant. Just normal life.I'm not going to do *more* to incorporate them into our day to day family - beyond what we do with the rest of our family.

We're All American; as in, a little bit of this, a little bit of that...! While I am western European, my father's family lived out of the country for years, so we have lots of influences from the area where they resided. Dh doesn't really know what his ethnic background is, but we believe that there is a bit of a mix. So you could pretty much place any mixture of just about ANY race/ethnicity in our family and have them 'fit in'. LOL Ok, but back to the point of this thread....We discuss and pray for the kids' bio parents. (We adopted from foster care, most of the kids' parents had their rights involuntarily terminated, the kids' and their extended bio families often have pretty horrific backgrounds.) We do have some pictures for some of the kids; others have none. So we have photo albums of bio families and foster families.We've discussed in general the countries where some of the kids' bio parents originally came from. We've pointed them out on a map, and had some non-specific discussions. As they get older and gain maturity and understanding I will explain what I know about their heritage (some is pretty vague) and what some of the traditions are for some of the peoples who live in those countries. Sadly, for most of my kids it is all a best-guess scenario. We have very little info about family heritage.