"Gotcha Day" for E | Batavia NY Photographer

I photographed this adoption last week but have been struggling with what images I wanted to share. This was a really special day for this family, and for this sweet girl. I’m SO happy I got to witness it and document it! The reason for the struggle was because this family really knows how to bring the love. They embraced. They laughed. They celebrated! There are so many photos I wanted to share but can’t, and that brings me to my second reason: This family also has other children still in the foster system and some of their friends have foster children, so sharing photos with other children was not an option.

A little backstory from this family: They started their foster care journey 9 years ago. They knew from the start that the end goal for fostering is always to reunite children with their family, but if that wasn’t possible, they were ready and willing to give these children a forever home, and on this day, they all got their wish! A forever home for their sweet, little girl.

E was placed into their arms right from the hospital as a newborn. It has been 4 years since that day; a long journey that has ended in sheer happiness! What is even more special is that she gets to share her home with an older brother and 2 biologic siblings, and to top this story off with a cherry, she also has 2 more siblings who were adopted as babies (pictured below) by another couple who live nearby and have been friends even before they were born: They celebrate birthdays together, have cookouts and play dates, get their photos taken together, and get to do all the things siblings do.

Finally, this family is really great at recognizing and including all of the people that made this day possible. Not one person was left out in celebrating E’s adoption day. All the people that make fostering and adoption possible don’t receive records or photos of children once they are adopted, so they made a point to print out thank you cards with E’s photo on them to remember them by.

You don’t meet many people like this very often, so when you do you hold on to them. Happy “Gotcha Day, E”! I’m so happy for you and your family!