blushing bride

If you're paying a visit from Dandy's lovely blog - yes, it's true! It was all because of terrible planning and I felt utterly rude all day long (I spent the entire time worrying that a camera flash would make my dress see-through!)! Oh and shhhhhh - my parents read this blog!

Good luck Dawn and B - we love you!

mary, gabriel and some nice news!

I've just done a new post on play on the word - about time too! The start of December means a chance to feel super-christmassy and to use our breakfast Bible-time to tell the boys about Jesus coming to the world.

This week we're looking at the story of Gabriel telling Mary she was going to have a baby. I was struck by the things Mary wouldn't have had to worry about! She wouldn't have had to look through baby books to work out a name that she and Joseph both agreed on - the angel said to call him Jesus. She wouldn't have had to wait for a 20 week scan to see what sex the baby was - the angel said he'd be a boy - God's son! She wouldn't have to wonder what her baby would grow up to be when he was older - the angel said he'd be God's king over everything, forever! Admittedly she had other things to worry about... "What's Joseph going to say?", "Oh my goodness I'm pregnant with the son of God!" - that kind of thing. It's rather amazing she was so cool about it.

We on the other hand are looking through baby name books, wanting to know the gender, wondering what our baby will grow to be like - because I'm 13 weeks pregnant and so excited!!! I am finding the whole experience more amazing and enjoyable this time round (no scares, pain or bleeding this time - phew) and it was lovely to see our little baby at our scan last week. I'm due on June 5th. Exactly a month before I turn 30.

We're praying for safety for the rest of the pregnancy and just like we always pray for Mikey and Dan, we're asking that this little baby would grow up to love Jesus. Amen, amen, amen!!!!

The picture shows Mary & Gabriel from our nativity scene - made by Hannah and Felix. We'll be adding new characters each week!

adoption: getting to know Mikey

If you've ever had a baby I want you to think back to those first weeks. It was exciting and amazing wasn't it? It was hard too though, eh? Remember just not being sure what to do? Remember wishing you had an instruction book? Remember the emotional roller coaster?! Remember the slow realisation that this-is-IT.

The first weeks with Mikey were much the same! Some bits were easier, some bits were harder!

We sat in Frankie & Benny's on Friday lunchtime trying to eat and chat and ignore the sickening nervousness. We asked each other questions like "what do you think he'll be like?", "do you think they'll expect us to be really hands-on from the start?", "what if he doesn't like us?", "what if we don't like him?". Over and again we whispered "we're going to meet our son!!!!".

Mikey's foster carers welcomed us really warmly, I think Mikey's social worker and our social worker, Kath were already there but it was a bit of a blur! Mikey was asleep so we had some time to have a cup of tea and chat. Part of me was glad he wasn't right there when we arrived but another bit of me was wishing we had got the meeting part over with. I remember my first glimpse of him - he was brought in when he woke up and he made a hilarious alien-like noise! His smiles were mainly reserved for his lovely foster carers but Dave managed to bring out some big grins too. We stayed hours longer than we expected and made a plan for the next two weeks of getting to know Mikey.

Now think back and just imagine doing those early weeks of babyhood while in another person's house and imagine that you don't know that person and then imagine that at the end of two weeks someone has the power to say "this isn't working - we don't think this child is the one for you". I'm making it sound worse than it actually was, but it was certainly the hardest and most intense part of the process. We spent the next two weeks getting to know Mikey in his environment, getting to know his routine and his character and bonding with him. Slowly the balance of responsibility changed from Mikey's foster carers doing everything and showing us the ropes to us doing everything except sleeping in the same house. Our location changed too so that at the end, Mikey was spending time at our house and being taken back to Liverpool at bedtime.

I'd never been an especially baby-centred person, before having Mikey I never knew how to speak to or play with a baby and I wasn't particularly keen to learn! If I'm honest, I was a bit scared of babies. Thankfully Dave is a lot more of a natural - partly because of his love for children and partly because of his amazing ability to seem to know how to talk to almost anyone! He gave me so much confidence in those early days. It seems silly now that we felt nervous about having to do the first nappy change, bath, mealtime, bottle, dressing, etc. I loved the moment when Dave turned round to his rapt audience and said "look, I'm not feeling that confident about changing a nappy with all of you watching, will you give me some space and I'll tell you if I need help" - hero.

I remember feeling hot, feeling a bit dry throaty being in a smokey house, getting terrible indigestion because I was nervous, feeling awkward about going up to use the loo so much, and just feeling exhausted being on show all the time. It must have been utterly exhausting for Mikey - it was very unreal in lots of ways, he must have been overwhelmed by all the attention.

Through the two weeks we had regular chats with our social worker, Mikey's social worker and his foster carers. There were lots of opportunities to talk about how we all felt it was going and many chances for us to say we needed more time or that it just wasn't working. A lot of emphasis was on Mikey's foster carers - as the ones who knew him best they were the best judges of how he was coping and whether he was bonding with us. They were really encouraging and shared their home, their lives and their precious Mikey with us.

As hard as it was, Mikey's foster carers made it so much easier for us. I guess in many ways we had the instruction manual we longed for when we got Dan! We had a written timetable of Mikey's daily routine, we had one-on-one coaching in parenting, we had a hotline to the people who knew Mikey inside out. Their kindness to us was absolutely astonishing - I can't imagine what it must have been like to have us in their house all the time and to have to consciously stand back and let us try to look after Mikey and even make mistakes! They'd loved and nurtured Mikey and made him a real part of their family since he was three days old. Sometimes foster carers are warned not to get too involved, not to get too close or emotionally entangled. Although it genuinely broke their hearts I am so grateful that Mikey's foster carers loved him like he was their own baby. I'm just so thankful that he has never known a time when he wasn't desperately and delightfully loved.

When Mikey moved in it was the happiest and saddest moment of my life. Mikey's foster carers brought him in and put his clothes and toys in his bedroom. They couldn't speak. All we could say was "thank you". Only Mikey managed not to cry. After nearly 10 months of parenting Mikey his foster carers handed him to us, willingly - ungrudgingly, but with utter, unspeakable sadness. Tears are streaming down my face - I could never do what they did for us. I can never express how grateful I am. We got Mikey and we continue to reap the blessings.

goodbye old friend

On friday I waved goodbye to Mikey's chair (looks terrifying doesn't it?!). It's been amazing and has made all the difference to our family over the last year. Having a chair that Mikey was safe in, that was stronger than he is and that can be high or low was brilliant - and hard to come by. But in recent months the chair has become unsafe, because Mikey is houdini. He can work the straps loose, he can bounce the chair (which I'm unable to lift) across the room even when the wheels are locked and when he bashes about in it when he's angry or stressed it becomes a metal torture chair!

BUT, because Mikey is physically able to sit, and the fabulous NHS is sadly strapped for cash, we won't be getting a replacement. At the moment we're wedging Mikey onto a little chair at a small table and he's coping well as long as we're right there to keep him sat down and to help him keep his food on the table. We really need to find a chair that is suitable for sitting at a normal dining table but that will also cope with Mikey's super strength! We're considering a Stokke chair, but I don't know whether they'll stand up to the Mikey test. Anyone got experience of them? If they're the right thing, it looks like it'll be a christmas gift - they're not exactly cheap!

I've got a date in the diary for Mikey's specialist health visitor to come and observe a mealtime and to give us some advice for feeding. I'm tired of meals being stressful and I would love to see my boys eat more than weetabix, yoghurt and beans on toast (inevitably, Dan ends up only wanting to eat what he sees Mikey eat)! Hopefully she'll have ideas for keeping a jumping bean with the flexibility of a fish and the strength of a bear in a chair and will help us crack the bleakness of mealtimes as they currently stand! I'm expecting miracles please!

adoption: finding out about Mikey

I think it was thursday when the phonecall came. It was the end of August. "I may have found you a child", said our social worker. "Oh my!" Said I, and the rest is a bit of a blur! At that point, all Paul could tell me over the phone was that it was a boy, about 6 months old and based in Liverpool. We made plans for him to come round the next day to give us more details. I left a "callmeassoonasyougetthis" message on Dave's mobile and my mind began to spin!

Dave was at the end of the children's holiday Bible club at church and we were getting ready to have a holiday starting on the Sunday night. That holiday would end up being a crazy whirl of DIY and nesting, trying to get the house ready. Until you have an idea of the age and needs of the child you're going to adopt you can't really decorate or buy anything, so the preparation was crammed into a short space of time!

We spent that evening wondering. Wondering what his name was, wondering why he was up for adoption, wondering if we would say yes, wondering how soon we could meet him. The big thing we both knew and agreed was that we trusted God, he'd been in charge of the process right from the start - unless there was a really clear, obvious reason why we should say no to this child we would pursue meeting him. We were almost certain this would be the boy for us.

When Paul arrived the next day he gave us Mikey's form - a lot like our form F, all about him and his background. Paul stayed quiet while we read through it. Things that stand out in my memory are: the black and white photocopied picture of him was blotchy and horrible - nothing like the lovely, gorgeous boy we eventually met! He was described as a happy baby who slept well. He was healthy and he came from a busy foster home. He had moved in with the foster carers at 3 days old, coming from the hospital he was born in. The form also included pictures and information about Mikey's birth family and contained really helpful explanations in their own words of how they felt about the situation and their hopes for Mikey's future.

There were things we wanted to find out more about and things we wanted to negotiate (like the level of contact Mikey's birth mother was hoping to have), but we knew without having to consult that we would say yes! Plans were made for us to meet with Mikey's foster carers and social worker.

The system with our agency (and I think the rest of the UK!) means that you're not offered a selection of children and asked to pick one. Your social worker should know you well enough to make clear choices on your behalf and so adopters are shown one child, believed to be the best match. If that doesn't work out, the social worker searches again. You're also expected to have made a pretty much 100% decision before you actually meet the child so that a vulnerable child isn't messed around by people meeting them to size them up - they've experienced enough confusion and loss already. Although of course, if at any point you're not happy or you feel it's not going to work out, you are absolutely encouraged to say and stop the process before it goes too far.

Meeting the social worker and the female foster carer from the couple caring for Mikey was scary - I really hoped they would like us - I felt very anxious that his foster carer might say "no way, I'm not letting him move in with you"! The ice was broken pretty fast though - the foster carer had brought a DVD of Mikey and our only working player was in our bedroom. Up we all trooped - me, Dave, foster carer and our social worker Kath (who had taken over from Paul after his placement finished and continues as our support to this day) and we all sat on our bed and watched this amazing DVD! I remember feeling giggly at the crazy dance music in the soundtrack and noticing Mikey's nystagmus and already feeling proud of him showing moments of physical strength and loving his gorgeous, croaky groans and babbles! I remember telling myself "this is your son, Alice" but my brain didn't know how to respond to that - all too weird and hard to imagine!

I really can't remember a thing that we talked about! I do remember his foster carer being kind and really positive towards us and his social worker being very honest and also giving us reason to hope and feel optimistic that it could all work out. We made plans to meet Mikey at the start of October. It felt like a million years away!

I still watch that DVD sometimes. I watched it so often between that meeting and seeing Mikey for the first time. We showed it to close friends, we showed the pictures on the cover to our youth group, we took it to my sister's wedding and sat and showed it to my immediate family (including a tiny, days old Iris). It's hard to see that 6 month old baby as our tall and feisty Mikey, but I love the moments in the video where you see a flash of the boy the baby would become. I can't wait till Mikey's able to understand that it's HIM on the screen and to tell him about the day we first saw it and first knew we would love him.

The picture shows one of the photos Mikey's foster carer emailed us to keep us going in that long wait before we met him. Those pictures were as precious as jewels to us.

odd boys

Just eaten way too much pizza and it seems to have made my brain stop working! So instead of talking about adoption today I'll just upload some peculiar videos.

Here's Mikey drinking lemonade. How cute is he?!


Here's Dan skating on plastic toast.

Our camera's video setting is broken BUT you can still hear Dan's lovely singing - I'm especially enjoying his song endings. He sang this song at full volume most of the time we pushed him round St Ives.

Urghhhh, I may have overdosed on pizza. I'm off to bed with some indigestion tablets, cos that's the kind of effortlessly glamorous life I live. Remember, dear reader, jealousy is an ugly thing.

holiday!!!!!!

I really should have warned you that things would go unexpectedly quiet but I'm so unused to going on holiday I only just remembered to get someone to feed the cat!

We got back yesterday afternoon and have just about had time to wash clothes, read through what post managed to get through the royal mail strikes and buy milk I can drink my tea.

If you would like to look at beautiful pictures of St Ives and the amazing apartment we stayed in I suggest you check out Dad's blog - he's a great photographer and his pictures really show how peaceful and gorgeous the place is.

My lovely parents decided to include us kids in their 60th birthday treat and took us on this incredible holiday. So Ruth, Stuart, Iris & Rosa, Hannah & Felix, Mum & Dad and me and the boys all stayed in a converted sail loft right on the beach. My favourite bits have been eating together with all the grown ups in the evening, getting to know Iris and tiny Rosa a bit better, Mikey and Dad making sand castles and seeing Dan in particular really get to know my family and be hilarious and relaxed with them all. He's now in total hero worship of my Dad, which seems entirely right to me! Dan enjoyed himself so much he woke each morning before 4.30am. We're now trying to train him to sleep again - I really LOVE my sleep.

We celebrated Dan's birthday while we were away. Two years has gone very fast! He got a sweeet trike which he loves very much. I'm still trying to make his present from us - I've not been very productive on the evening knitting front in recent weeks.

It's 8.30pm here and I'm ready for bed! I'm planning to post more adoption stuff soon if that's OK with you? I'd love to share what it was like meeting Mikey for the first time and how we deal with things like telling him about his adoption and keeping in touch with his birth family.