Things that bring unbridled joy....

Feeding ducks.
Being pulled round the house on duvet with your brother.
A stick that breaks unexpectedly when you lean on it.
Anything you can jump off.
Anything that splashes.
Exploring the tent display at Go Outdoors....

Watching your new sons find joy in the ordinary.

Rain, Attachment and Mechanical Failure

The boys are visiting us at home today, for the first time.  I slept really badly last night, despite going to bed at a reasonable hour and being utterly exhausted.  Just too much happening in my head.

We arrived back home last night, after 2 days in North Birmingham.  We were doing bedtime on Wednesday and the morning routine yesterday with the boys, so it made sense to sleep over somewhere nearby.

We had a great time on Wednesday.  A had a 'good bye' party at school in the morning and then we picked him up at lunchtime to go to an appointment.  Everyone was partying hard when we arrived.  His teacher got all his classmates to make him a goodbye card and she's taken some photos of the party.

The school have handled things brilliantly.  Everyone seems to know what's happening.  His whole class has seen his family book and DVD.    The move has been celebrated by everyone as a positive thing and he has had chance to say goodbye properly.  One of the staff spoke to us yesterday and said how much they appreciated all the preparation materials.  She said they'd had a child who'd been adopted with a different authority and there had been none of those things. "It was horrible.  There were people coming into the classroom and we weren't allowed to say anything and the child was getting more and more anxious.  It's lovely to see it done properly."

We went to the park with them both in the afternoon. and had a great time.  J fell over a couple of times.  I have been looking out for attachment cycle opportunities this week.  Big cuddles after falling over and being scared felt very important.  J, who is generally really frenetic, came and sat on my lap for ages and we watched A having fun with Andy.  He even conquered the big boys' climbing frame, with support and encouragement from his Dad.

Thursday we took A to school for his last day and then had a whole day scheduled with J, until it was time to pick him up from school.  The foster carer was obviously looking forward to our day out together too!  It was absolutely pouring with rain, by the time we'd dropped A off.  What on earth do you do with a 2 year old, in a town you don't know, for 5 hours in the pouring rain?  We asked the foster carer, who had no ideas at all but rang her son-in-law who suggested a soft play place.  We arrived at the soft play place, to find it very shut.  What now?

Andy spied a Sure Start centre.  So we parked the car there and I went in to ask about places to go.  They had some sessions in the afternoon, a couple of leaflets and the opening times of the soft play centre.  It opened later in the morning.  Got back to the car and it wouldn't start.  At all.  Despite encouragement.  I had helpfully not got round to updating our breakdown cover.

What on earth do you do with a 2 year old in a town you don't know, in the pouring rain, with a broken down car?  By that time, ironically, the soft play centre round the corner, was open.  So I took J there whilst Andy found a garage to tow the car away.  We spent the day at the soft play place and got a bus back to the foster carer's house in time to walk to A's school to pick him up.

Not knowing the buses that well, we allowed an hour and a half to get back to the foster carer's house, because we desperately didn't want to be late to pick up A.  And we had no mobile phone.  Mine ran out of charge and I'd left it in the car.  Usually, I'd have remembered to take a charger with us, given we were away over night.  But there's been rather a lot to think about this week!

It took 20 minutes to get to the carer's home.  Leaving us with an unscheduled hour in the house back in the 'he's not one for toys' scenario.  Whichever child we are with, the foster carer will explain that the other one would play with toys, but not this one.  This time, we went and got the one toy that we knew where to find - a Fisher Price fire station and fire engine - and J played very happily, with a bit of interaction and encouragement, for an hour.  Faced with this irrefutable evidence, the foster carer explained that 'J will play with toys, but A isn't interested unless...'

We have warmed to the foster carers a bit this week.  Now we've all become accustomed to one another, she has warmed to us and we've seen her softer side.  At the start of the week, she came across as being very cold.  Now she's relaxed, we've seen her softer side.  She does have genuine affection for the children she looks after.  It's a home of rules and structure, rather than one of fun and nurture.  And the fact she really doesn't like mess and muddle is the most likely reason for the intolerance of toys about the place.  That, and the fact that the boys need a bit of encouraging to get going with play sometimes.

The routine, structure and boundaries have provided physical safety and security, which has made a big difference to A and J.  Those are the things we will be keen to replicate.  The things we plan to add are fun, stimulation and love and cuddles.

We got home last night with the help of a very kind friend, who came and fetched us.  Our car is still at the garage.  The boys are coming to visit us today, with one of the foster carers and a social services support worker.  Just time to make sure the house is safe......

school places and other sundry items....

This morning, we had a brief window before we needed to drive to the foster carer's home, so I went to the school at the end of the road to get application forms.  We've had a couple of gos at trying to sort out school places before.  But there has always been information we haven't had, which has made that difficult to do.  And social services were not prepared to supply it until the match with A and J was ratified.  I was also confident, having met A's teacher yesterday, that getting him into year one is the right thing to do.  I had wondered if we should fight for him to do reception again, and start afresh in September.  But on balance, I think going into year 1 will be fine.

I also wrote back to Social Services to confirm that "the proposed placement is acceptable" to us, as the letter we received this morning requested.  I'm inclined to think it's a little late now, if it isn't...!

I also found out what we need to do get J referred for Speech and Language Therapy.  His language is significantly behind for his age.

Meanwhile, Andy did the house work.

And at 1 o'clock, school places applied for, social services written to and kitchen tidied we set off for day 2 of introductions...

Introductions

We're just back home after a loooonnnnnggggg day which contained only one cup of coffee.

We were at Social Services this morning, for something called a Life Appreciation meeting.  Social Services invited all the people who've had input into James and Aaron's life to come and share what they know about the boys and any insights they had.

Loads of people came, including several from James' nursery and Aaron's current school teacher.  There were people from the family centre and from Sure Start who were involved when concern was first expressed.  Everyone was lovely and had obvious affection for the children.  It was very sad to hear in detail about what their early lives were like.  It was also deeply moving to be surrounded by so many warm, caring people who thought so much of the children.  We have pictures aplenty and James' nursery have made him a lovely photo album of his time there.

After the meeting came the planning of what looks like a pretty exhausting schedule of introductions over the next 10 days.

Then we popped round to see the kids for an hour or so after school.  Easier said than done.  They live on one of those roads that is in about 3 parts so we had great trouble actually finding the house.  Because the road goes round several corners, it was very easy to end up outside the right numbered house on the wrong road.  We thought we'd found it at one point and disturbed a rather bemused looking elderly gentleman with a laryngectomy.  Oops!

Apparently, our introductory books and DVD went down a storm.  James, in particular, has been watching Pim and Bibble incessantly, along with the foster carer's granddaughter.  When they received our family books along with the puppets, they recognised Bibble from the film.  We are told they didn't let the puppets leave their sides and Aaron wouldn't put his family book down and was kissing the picture of his new bedroom.  He has run the batteries down so the book is no longer a talking photo album.

We got on really well with the boys.  About as well as we generally do with most children we meet.  I was encouraged that they responded very normally to us both.  Not overly effusive or very reticent.  Just normal.  J is loud, giggly and boisterous.  He was soon doing rough and tumble play with Andy.  A is quieter and more talkative.

They are both lovely.

All in all a good day.

We see them again tomorrow, after school.

What's in a name?

I got an email from the boys' social worker on Friday, to say that the decision to match us with them has been ratified by the official decision maker.

We are now, four months after first hearing about them, officially cleared to begin introductions with our sons.  We expect that to begin tomorrow.

The boys found out that we will be their parents, and saw the photo albums that we've made for them, on Friday evening.

I find it unbelievable that we only officially get the go ahead 3 days before we meet our kids!  And there are cases where things don't go ahead, either at matching or at ratification.  How is one supposed to prepare emotionally?

This was made somewhat easier for us by an interesting incident that occurred seven years ago.  We opened our home up for prayer for a few weeks, back in June 2004.  One day, Andy had been praying and came downstairs and said with great conviction, "God's just given me two names."  They were boys names.  We had friends at the time who wanted children and very specifically wanted twin boys.  We thought maybe they were going to have twin boys, and that was what they would call them.  So we wrote the names down.

And then our friends had a little girl.  And then another little girl.  We shrugged our shoulders and assumed Andy had been mistaken.

Nearly seven years, we were looking at profiles of children from social services.  There was one profile of two boys.  Something about them touched my heart.  I'd felt for months that God had been dropping hints that we might be getting boys.

We were sat, having coffee, talking about what to do next.  I was suggesting that we should find out more about the boys.  Andy was slightly miffed we'd only been sent 3 profiles, because he was expecting a catalogue full.  And I suddenly realised that the boys we were looking at were called by the names that Andy had been convinced God had told him seven years before.

How mad is that???

We didn't throw caution to the winds at that point, we continued to seek the information we wanted and we thought really carefully about it.  I'm pretty convinced, though, that it's no co-incidence that our boys are called by the names Andy thought God had told him all those years ago.

My first thought was,  "what a story to be able to tell our children!"

To be able to say that God had prepared a family for them, because He knew that they would need one.

It has also been incredibly helpful to me over the weeks running up to matching.  It's just given me the little bit of confidence I needed, that we've made the right decision.  Otherwise I would have been over-thinking the whole thing.  Wondering if we were doing the right thing, if they were the right kids, worrying that we might have got it wrong, that we've not asked all the right questions...

Instead, we've chosen to believe that these are the right kids and that things will go ahead.  Getting a 'yes' from the matching panel was still a huge moment.  And we were still concerned that they might say 'no'.  But that little hint that we were maybe heading in the right direction has made the last few weeks so much easier.

God is good!

A bit more about panel...

I was too excited to sit down and write anything coherent about our experience of panel, last time I blogged.

I had been about to take panel in our stride this time round.  A necessary process, but not particularly irksome.  Assuming that we would be matched with the boys at panel, I wasn't really that bothered.  But then we got a slightly panicked phone call from our social worker on Monday "Just to let us know" that the chair of panel was concerned about Andy's smoking and had spoken to the head of children's services about it.

And suddenly it was terrifying....

Having been to panel with our social worker before, we were somewhat pre-warned.  Last time, she was really anxious and spent the time we were waiting to go into panel, doing a very stressy high speed 'what to say in panel' pep talk.

So we took our lap top and a copy of the Pim and Bibble DVD, which we knew she wouldn't have seen, because it went to the boys social worker, James, who works in a different office in a different town.  When we arrived, Chris and James were both already there.  On cue, Chris, immediately began talking about panel and the smoking issue.

"Right," I said, "we've brought distraction techniques!  We thought you'd like to see the DVD.  And we've made introductory books for the children to show you..."

Chris agreed that she wanted to see the DVD.  She thought it was great and requested a copy to show her colleagues on the grounds that they should get to see it as all James' colleagues had seen it.

Panel was running an hour late.   So there was plenty of time to chat before we went in.  We mainly managed to steer the conversation away from panel and smoking.  At one point, two of James' colleagues popped their heads round the door to report that panel was 'in a good mood today'.  James introduced us. "Of course!" his colleague responded, "Pim and Bibble!!"

Panel was fine in the end.  To my surprise, the smoking issue barely came up.  I had both barrels loaded with lots of very passionate, well thought out arguments which I didn't need to use in the end.

Probably just as well.

The social workers went in before us and Chris told us afterwards that she had really laid into them about the fact that this is a good match and there are no perfect parents.  "I told them there are risks and vulnerabilities in every placement and this one is no different.  I told them how much you have to offer and what a good match this is.."  It evidently did the trick.  I got the distinct impression, when it came to it, that the reason they asked about the smoking was because it was on the list of questions they'd decided to ask rather than because they were worried about it.

It's done now!  Hooray!

Matching Panel

We're off to matching panel this afternoon.  It is 10am and I am still in my dressing gown.  I've done some things, but in the back of my mind, I kind of think that the day hasn't really started, because I'm not dressed yet.  So there's nothing to panic about yet.  Sad, I know!

The last few days have been a real roller coaster emotionally.  I am pleased to say the terror gave way to excitement and I have been barely able to sit still.  

Then we had a phone call from the social worker on Monday night, to say that the chair of the panel has raised concerns with the manager of social services over the fact that Andy smokes.   Two days before panel!  Honestly!  

The issue came up in the approval panel.  We told them that Andy doesn't smoke in the house or around kids.  They seemed OK with that.  They didn't set any limits on the ages of the children we could adopt.  And now suddenly there's an issue.  

Honestly.  This process...  

Terror!

We have matching panel next Wednesday, which we fully expect to be a formality.  I expect it will feel like a very formal formality, when we are sat in that conference room again, with 15 people justifying their existence by asking us questions...

Assuming there are no hitches, we have an introductions planning meeting on the 23rd May and will meet the boys for the first time that day.

And I am currently terrified!!!!  I don't think I've ever been so stressed!  The kind of scared one is just before going on stage to do something major in front of lots of people.

I have been atrributing my stress to all sorts of other things.  Until, having woken up with my heart rate roughly normal, I picked up the letter inviting us to panel and terror struck again.

We have so much to get ready!  No idea what parenthood will be like!  No idea if we will be any good at it.  No clue what we're letting ourselves in for.  

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a date!!

We have a date for matching panel!  It will be the 13th May.  At that point we will get the go-ahead officially, we hope, to adopt our two boys. 

Then things will move really quickly.  We will probably start introductions within 2 weeks of matching panel and the boys will be home within about a fortnight of that. 

Oh my goodness!!!!  

How exciting!

Trying to Prepare

Andy and I have been trying to do some things to get ready for when the boys come home.  We don't have a date for that yet.  It's not actually officially confirmed.  We have to go to matching panel for them to decide if we're a good match for the boys and then their recommendation goes to the official decision maker.  Then we start introductions.

The thing is, the period of time between us officially knowing that we are approved to be parents to these boys and starting introductions is generally really really short.  Like 10 days or so.  So it makes sense to get ready now.  If we wait we'll be running round like headless chickens.

This is easier said than done, however.  We know we'll need car seats.  So we went to Mothercare to investigate this whole new world of car safety.  "How much do they weigh?  How tall are they?  We can't recommend a car seat until you can tell us that."  I asked the social worker.  Who has told me their height and weight in October last year and suggested we 'add a bit to that'.

Social workers suggested we investigate schools.  Rang our local school.  They tell us this would be an in-year transfer so they wouldn't tell us anything and said we needed to get in touch with the Local Education Authority.
The LEA said they wouldn't talk to us until we'd filled in their forms.
We got the forms.
The forms want to know what school the oldest currently attends.
I asked the social worker.
He won't tell us until the boys have been matched with us.

Ho hum.

I actually don't mind if sorting the school thing out takes a bit of time.  The oldest doesn't legally have to start school until September anyway.  Though he is at school now.  I don't think a bit of time together as a family, getting to know one another and bonding will do any harm at all.

Meanwhile, we're buying beds....

Meeting the foster carers....

We met the foster carers.  Perfectly pleasant people but it was a bizarre experience.  Meeting the current carers of your children is slightly surreal.

We needed to know that the boys are right for us.  And that includes, for us, knowing that they don't appear to have massive behavioural or learning issues.  Of course, nothing is certain and there are no guarantees, but we needed to know that we're not walking naively into a situation we wouldn't be able to handle.  Though on reflection that sounds like a pretty good description of becoming a parent!!

I found the meeting really difficult.  Not for any particular reason.  It just felt odd.  And I'd spent several weeks feeling all maternal and broody in a nice kind of way.  Meeting the foster carers and being told about some of the problems they've needed to deal with brought me down to earth with a bit of a bump.  I found it very hard and wanted 5 minutes out but couldn't quite work out how to ask for it.   Andy was fine with the whole thing.

The boys sound great.  And we are going ahead.

Meeting foster carers...

We are meeting the boys' foster carers on Monday!  This is very exciting!  I have been very excited for days now.  Very much looking forward to our boys coming home.

No.  We don't have a date.  The adoption process is far too convoluted for us to have anything sensible like a date yet!!!!  Our social worker and their social worker, have confirmed already that they are happy to proceed.  We meet the foster carers on Monday, to find out more about the boys.  Then we officially say yes.  And then the social workers do a report that goes to a panel that has to ratify the decision.  And then that decision is officially ratified by an official decision maker.  And then introductions are planned.

The ridiculous thing is that the time from the official official decision being made, to us beginning a 2 week introduction period with boys, by the end of which they will be living with us, is generally really short.  It can be as quick as a week or 10 days.

This really means that we have to assume they are coming.  Otherwise we would have nothing ready!!!

Information, information, information

We've been reading the Child Permanency reports on the two boys we asked for more information about.  Each one consists of about 40 pages of stuff.  On first reading, it feels like lots and lots of information.  All about their parents and their backgrounds, what's happened to them, why they're in care etc etc etc.

On reflection, though, it still leaves quite a lot of questions unanswered.

It's also quite strange, emotionally.  Bit of a roller coaster.  Given the last 3.5 years, this should come as no surprise, I know!!

We began with the 'cute factor' information and I fell in love.

Now we're beginning to get the detailed, nitty gritty stuff and all the warm feelings have completed evaporated.  I still think they could be our kids, but there are some hard questions we need answering and some thinking we need to do that is practical rather than emotional.  What can we take on, realistically?  What risks are we prepared to take?

A Date for Panel!!!!

I am excited!  We finally have a date for going to the adoption panel.  It's the 5th January.

This is when we find out whether we are approved as adoptive parents or not.

I'm not quite holding out for the 5th being the moment we get an absolute final decision, because nothing in this process is guaranteed or simple.  However, whatever happens, it is a really significant step along the way.

We also have another social worker coming to see us at some point in the next couple of weeks to do a 'second opinion' visit.  I was a bit worried about this, but apparently it's normal procedure.

The last of the Referees....

Well, the social worker saw the last of our referees this morning.  I chatted to one of them afterwards.  She seemed to think that the conversation went really well.  Which is encouraging.  The social worker asked at the end if she had any questions and she said the one thing she thought I would want to know was 'When?'

Honestly.  I really haven't primed all our referees to nag the social worker about how long this is all taking!!  Our friends obviously feel for us, having walked with us these three years, and it seems that the moment they get the opportunity to talk the social worker, they find a way of slipping it in.

Anyway.  Chris apparently said that she is aiming for us to go to panel in November, be approved by Christmas and begin looking at kids in the New Year.

Meanwhile, Andy and I are just getting our heads round the fact that there just might be an end to this process and we just might end up being parents at the end of it.  We spent the day continuing our work on sorting the house out.  We are still working on moving my office to the box room, to leave another large bedroom free.  We thought it would be a simple task, but it's a very small room that faces into the sun, so when we put my computer in it, I discovered that there was nowhere in the room, where I could actually see the screen, due to the glare from the sunlight.  Even shutting the curtain (which is quite a pale colour) didn't make any difference.  So we had to go out and buy a blind.  Blind is now fitted, but it took much longer than we expected to not get very far.

My computer and desk are now in the new room, which is an oasis of calm and order, because all the 'stuff' is still in the large room!  I quite like it like this....  Who needs paperwork anyway?  It looks like the kind of office you'd see in a show home.  A computer, a desk and just a couple of token items on the shelves.   I have somewhere to work tomorrow, which is the main thing.

Referees

Chris, the social worker, saw our second family referees today.  They have come to visit for a few days from the Isle of Wight.  Andy's sister and brother in law.  And the nieces (Hooray!!).

She saw our friend Linda last week and is seeing our other 'friend' referees on Monday.

We are very fond of our nieces.  Even though we don't see them that often.  They are quite grown up now.  19 and 16.  They were very young when Andy and I met and it has been great to see them growing up.  They still remember the time we had a water pistol fight with them in the car park at a cinema.  Then there was the evening we followed dinner with about an hour of kitchen science experiments.  (You know the sort of thing.  Making a battery from an orange.  Blowing up balloons with bicarb and vinegar).  It's great to see them.  Andy is cooking dinner with one of them just now.  I am escaping for 10 minutes.  Long day at work.  Needing to introvert briefly.

Our brother in law, bless him, quizzed the social worker about timescales etc.  She says that 'if she had her way' we would be going to panel in November and it would be 'completed' by December.  But sshhhh.  Apparently he wasn't meant to tell us that.  So don't snitch.  I'm not sure what 'completed' means.  I think it probably means 'approved'.

Off to be sociable and see what the chefs have produced!

Waiting but not ready.....

This week has given me pause for thought.    We have now been engaged in this 'adoption' process for 3 years.  You might think, that after all that time, we would be the ready potential parents on the planet.

Actually, I think the opposite is true.

I have noticed, this week, that there has been a sort of split personalilty thing going on.

Part of me has been working through the process stuff reasonably efficiently.  In order to cope with the uncertainty of the whole thing, however, I have completely shut my mind and emotions off from the prospect of becoming a parent.  There is a certain amount of warped, emotional logic which thinks (wrongly) that by not thinking about it, I will be more able to cope with the disappointment if we are turned down.

Naively, I thought that we would have no choice but to prepare ourselves, because of the assessment process.  I thought the assessment visits would really help us to think and prepare.  Actually, they've done nothing of the sort.  It has just been about furnishing social services with a whole heap of information.  Useful for them, obviously, but not for us.

So here we are.  Three years after starting this process, and I feel less ready to become a parent now than I did when we started.

This is where pregnancy has the edge over adoption.  When you get pregnant, there is a definite timescale.  Barring miscarriages etc, you will be a parent 9 months later.  There is no getting away from it.  At some point in that 9 months you have to get ready.  With adoption, you just don't know.  We might be parents in 4 months time.  We might never be parents.  We might begin introductions in 10 months time.  Or two years.  Or six months.  It really is anybody's guess.

And that is a lot lot harder to deal with than I ever could have guessed it would be.

Our last assessment visit

Andy and I spent three and half hours with Chris, our social worker, this morning.  The last of our assessment visits.  Sometimes called a 'home study'.  It's been quite an interesting journey, this part of the assessment process.  And I have really warmed to Chris, who I think has warmed to us also.  She is very warm hearted and passionate.  And obviously has oodles of experience.  Now she has to meet our referees and write up the report.  

Today we spent a lot of time talking about what kind of children we would be prepared to take on.  It really meant ticking a lot of boxes about the kinds of children we wouldn't be prepared to take on.  By which I mean the questions were all about the potential problems kids would come with.  So histories of violence, sexual abuse, attachment disorder, learning disability, aspergers syndrome, illness, physical problems, behavioural issues of various kinds....  the list went on.    

It's not nice ticking boxes and excluding people on the basis of such things.  It took a bit of thinking and reflecting to find a way of approaching the task which felt comfortable.  Don't know about Andy, but my thinking was as follows:

1. We've got to fill this piece of the form in, however horrid it feels.  
2. The hard truth is that whoever we parent in the end, means excluding everyone else.
3. To do the best job we can, we need to be as honest as possible with ourselves about what we want to do and what we can offer.

So we ticked the boxes.  Effectively we said that we understand that children will come with all sorts of problems and issues, but that we are looking to parent children who 

1. we stand some chance of forming an attachment with and who have a good chance of forming an attachment with us.
2. have a good chance of living independent adult lives.

We're hoping for a sibling group of 2 aged between around 3 and 8.

Obviously, I have a deep desire to be a parent.  From a sort of 'making a difference' point of view, I want to break the cycle for some kids.  Give them a stable, loving base to grow into adulthood from and a good model of what family life can be so that they have a fighting chance of going out and replicating that.  I feel really passionately about that.  

We have been asked to write something about our faith and about church.  And we have a financial assessment form to complete.  And then our 'homework' for the moment is almost done.  I have to say, the pre-adoption course and the assessment itself have been by far the easiest and most interesting part of the process.  It might have been hard if we were very private people but we're not in the slightest.

So.  Next thing for us is the profiling event later in July.  Oh, and sorting out the house to make space for a family.  Bigger job than it sounds, I think!

Enjoying our assessment

I know this isn't what people usually say about the pre-adoption assessment process, but I am actually quite enjoying it.  We have finally managed to put to bed the issue of the fence.  Which is great!  The risk assessments and information about the shared garden will go into the report and we do not have to put up a fence in order to continue with the assessment process.  Hooray!

So to the process itself.  I know lots of people find it intrusive.  And I know that we are being finally judged worthy or not worthy of being parents.   But actually it's an opportunity to talk about ourselves and our views for a couple of hours every week or so to someone who is paid to listen and take it seriously.  What's not to like?  People pay therapists hundreds of pounds for that kind of opportunity!

This week we were talking about our relationship.  How we met.  What the strengths of our relationship are.  We had to say how we view one another so we'd both written short pieces about one another in preparation for the assessment.  Which Chris read out.  It was all quite romantic and slightly un-British.  A bit gushing really.  The sorts of things people say in funeral eulogies.  (There's a thought.  We could keep them.  Might save a job for one of us later on...)

We're also going to something called a profiling event next month.  We will get to see information about children the local authority is seeking to place with families.  I am really looking forward to that.  It will be good to find out about real children in our county needing families.  And we can express an interest in children we would like to know more about.  Although I suspect the fact we've not been approved means it's a bit like when you're looking at houses and you haven't sold yours yet and there are other people interested who have.

On the emotional roller-coaster that is adoption, I am on the flat bit at the top, where the view is marvellous and it's kind of peaceful and you think it might just get exciting some time soon.

Waiting to hear...about the fence

We are still waiting to hear the verdict of Mr Chief Manager regarding our garden. And whether the dangers of sharing it with the neighbours must be eliminated before we could be entrusted with children. He was going to get back to us a week ago.

In the meantime, a friend put an enquiry about shared gardens on an adoption association discussion board. Someone replied and said that they share a garden and it was never even raised as an issue when they were being assessed. I have copied and pasted this information into an email for the manager today, which also served to remind him that we haven't heard anything.

In the meantime, Bohemian Rhapsody - as it always should have been...