Crumbs...

blushing bride

2009-12-04T16:40:00.003Z

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!

2009-12-01T13:39:00.007Z

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

2009-11-18T19:44:00.003Z

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

2009-11-08T16:00:00.005Z

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

2009-11-06T19:53:00.004Z

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

2009-11-03T20:17:00.003Z

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!!!!!!

2009-10-30T20:20:00.003Z

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.

adoption: getting grilled. Not so bad after all!

2009-10-22T19:39:00.005+01:00

I'm attending a parenting course at the moment and many of the stories I am hearing about people's experiences of life and parenthood are heartbreaking. I mean it. In a group of 10 I am the only representative of a family with a happy, solid marriage, a dad who is involved in his kids' lives, and children who have barely seen conflict. Sadness is the norm. My dad has written a good post recently suggesting that the solution to a lot of society's big issues often lies not primarily with schooling, or social work but with parents. I think he's right and I think the problem here is that parents are hard to reach and hard to change! I'm grateful for the help I get from homestart and surestart.

I wonder what it would be like if all prospective parents weren't just sent to antenatal classes, but were quizzed, grilled and trained like wannabe adopters are. Here are some of the questions we were asked - I think be forced to think things like this through really helps not only in preparing you for the unknown but for opening your eyes to the baggage and pre-formed ideas that will unavoidably affect your parenting - for good and bad.

How would you answer...

Describe your upbringing, what do you remember about family life?
What things were important to your family?
What things would you do that your parents did? What would you definitely not do?
Did you enjoy school?
How do past romantic relationships affect you now?
Write down your support network - people who support you and know you well, including where they live and how often you see each other
How do you think your life will change when you have a child (e.g. your job, finances, time, social activities)
What would your partners' perfect day be like?
How do you cope with disagreements?
Are there any parts of life that you know you don't agree on or that are hard? (e.g in laws, how money is spent, your plans for the future, etc) - how will these issues be affected by the arrival of a child?
How do you share out household duties? Will that stay the same when you have a child?
How do you think you will discipline your child?
What are your dreams for your child (marriage, college, good job etc.) How will you feel if those things aren't achieved?
How will you respond if your child grows to be very different from you (e.g. chooses to reject your religious faith, sexual orientation, etc.)
What things in your home need to change before you have a child?
Can you cope financially (prove it!)?

These are just skimming the surface, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of things we talked with our social worker about. Everything you talk about goes into an enormous document called a Form F. In that form your social worker describes you and makes their recommendation as to whether you should be approved as adopters. The idea of the form is that the panel who read it should feel like they know you before they meet you - where they grill you again and then either accept or reject you as adopters.

There's more to the process than the social worker meetings, but it's a big part. For many people it's harrowing, exhausting and painful but for Dave and I, a lot of it simply reminded us of the BLESSINGS we have been given - especially exceptionally loving and wise parents and the strength that comes from having a church family.

I remember the day we first met our social worker, Paul. He was a student - even younger than us! We'd just been having our central heating and bathroom done - it was all ready, except the loo was unusable. I remember praying like mad that he wouldn't need to wee (he didn't)! I remember being so nervous! That day stands even more clearly in my memory now though because the day we first met our social worker was the day Mikey first met his birth parents. The day we took a big step forward in saying "yes" to Mikey was the day Mikey's birth parents said a heartbroken "no" to him. 31st January 2006, the day Micheal Joseph was born. I know where I was!

adoption: the process in the UK (with none of the correct social-worker jargon!)

2009-10-20T20:49:00.004+01:00

Mikey, 11 months

Adoption seems to vary a lot from country to country. In the UK you basically have three groups involved: The children waiting for families, the adults waiting for children and the social workers acting as go-betweens. The majority of the children waiting to be adopted have been taken away from their birth families as a last resort and by and large this is down to abuse, neglect and birth parent/s not being fit to care for their children because of substance addiction, severe illness or a history of behaviour that strongly indicates that future children will suffer abuse or neglect. The minority of children in care are there because their birth families feel unable to look after them - often because of disability or disfigurement. You rarely get the movie storyline of parents killed in a car crash and in the UK you rarely get a woman taking the option of adoption while they're pregnant - abortion is relatively common and growing more so with increasing anomaly testing during pregnancy and laws that allow late abortions in the case of disability.

Basically adoption in the UK is rarely a birth parent's choice and always, always, always has a sad story behind it somewhere.

This is why it takes a while to be 'okayed' as adopters. These children aren't the solution to a fairytale desire for the perfect family, they are vulnerable, complicated. An addition to the family that brings a lot of extra baggage.

I get a bit frustrated when chat show hosts moan about how long adoption takes and, admittedly it didn't take as long for Dave and I as it takes for many adopters. In my opinion, if we're entrusting some of our most vulnerable children to adults they've never met before the least that can be expected is that those adults will have been police-checked, that they will have been carefully trained to understand what sorts of experiences the children they may become parents of have undergone and how they will be affected. The least we can expect is that those people have been thoroughly interviewed over a period of time, allowed to discuss their own childhood experiences, prepared for parenthood and approved by an impartial panel.

Having said all that - at every point in the process for us I was desperate for the end, desperate to meet my child and just get on with the job of being a parent!

I have a feeling that if I talk about the whole process in this post I'll be writing forever, so I'll just give you a rundown of the highlights and talk a little more about the bits that made a real difference to us tomorrow.

For us it went like this:

Early August '05 - introductory open evening
September '05 - we sent our application form off to the adoption agency
November '05 - 3 days of training for prospective adopters
Jan - May '06 - interviews with a social worker
July '06 - approved as adopters by the panel
August '06 - our social worker rang us to tell us about Mikey
October '06 - we meet Mikey and later in the month he moves in
March '07 - Mikey's adoption is made totally official by a judge in court

In just over a year we went from our first contact with the agency to our first meeting with our son! That kind of timing is pretty similar to a couple planning to start a family, conceiving, going through pregnancy and childbirth (except without the varicose veins and gas+air)! For us, it felt like forever, but it also felt like an extremely positive experience where we were really nurtured and genuinely prepared for parenthood. I can't give enough praise to the lovely people at our agency, adoption matters northwest!

adoption: making the decision

2009-10-19T20:32:00.003+01:00

Three years to the day that Mikey moved in, I thought you might like to see a picture of how breathtakingly gorgeous he looked when we met him! This was taken at Mikey's foster carers' home on 10th October 2006 - 5 days after we'd met our son for the first time!

I LOVE being asked questions about adoption and this is, I suppose, a chance to answer some that I'm asked all the time (especially a horribly belated response to the fabulous Dawn) and perhaps raise some questions too.

The question I'm asked most regularly is "what made you do it?", so here goes...

Before Dave and I got married (during our brief 7 month engagement!) we talked about all sorts of things and tried to feel as prepared as we could. Dave and I are fortunate to agree on lots of the big things in life - it's the silly little things, like washing up, that cause the most conflict between us! We chatted about what we would do if we couldn't have children of our own and both felt we wouldn't want to go down the IVF route - it just wasn't for us. It was quite natural for us both to say we would consider adoption. I suppose it's quite an easy thing to agree on when you've not had any experience of trying to start a family and the emotions that go along with it all. So for a while, that was a decision made and we didn't think about it for sometime after we got married.

I guess it was at some point in the first year that we talked about it again and one of us raised the question "would we choose to adopt a 'hard to place' child - like one with a learning disability?". I don't know if this seems like a weird thing to think about, but Dave and I both have experience of growing up with people with learning disabilities around us. Dave's dad has worked with adults with learning disabilities since Dave was very young and I grew up with relationships of varying closeness with peers with learning disabilities. I guess those experiences helped it feel more normal to us, and also know what some of the reality was like.

Dave and I tentatively, excitedly, said that yes, we would be willing to adopt a child like that. In fact, the more we talked about it (and we talked about it a lot in the weeks and months to come) the more keen we became. It sounds utterly perverse when I say this, but we were almost hoping we wouldn't be able to have our own children so that we could adopt a child with a learning disability. I can't explain this desire, except to say that I think a lot of it is the way God was changing our hearts and minds - it's not what I dreamed about doing when I was a teenager, it's not the average wishlist of a couple in their early twenties. But it became our genuine joy, our longing for the future.

I remember it was a trip to Tescos in Spring 2005 that we practically stalked a mother and her gorgeous little girl with Down's Syndrome, talking together about how cute she was. At the checkout I turned to Dave and said "let's do it - we don't have to have adoption as our plan b, let's just plan to do it!"

And that was it - the decision made! We hadn't thought about when, whether we would try to have "our own" kids first, whether we would be allowed to do it. We just knew that one day, we really wanted to adopt a child with a learning disability.

Little did we know that in Spring 2005 a little baby was conceived. He would have Down's Syndrome and his birth parents wouldn't realise it until he was born. Little did we know that they wouldn't feel they could look after him. Little did we know that God was preparing us to be Mikey's forever family while he was knitting him together in his mother's womb.

Next... the adoption process.

excuse me!

2009-10-18T13:40:00.003+01:00

Excuse the silence. Weariness, evenings of painting and decorating and an awful bout of food poisoning have made thing quiet around here.

My plan for the week ahead is to talk about adoption. There are three reasons for this:

It's just been national adoption week (and I didn't realise until friday!)
Adoption is just a totally fabulous thing!
Tomorrow marks the 3 year anniversary of Mikey moving in - whoooooop!

Hope that's all right with everyone and that the picture of Dan makes up for some of the absence?!

pukka tea

2009-10-04T20:30:00.004+01:00

I absolutely love pukka tea. I'm just trying a new flavour and I think it's yummy. I never used to like any herbal or fruity teas - I'm just a strong, milky yorkshire tea girl. But these are really great.

It also helps that they're in lovely packages and smell really nice! It's a cheap way of giving myself little treats. But nothing will ever beat yorkshire tea. Oh my goodness, if this is something that doesn't exist in any other country I'm never leaving the UK!

standard lamp

2009-09-29T21:55:00.003+01:00

Very excited to see this in a new local charity shop. I thought charity shops had been banned from selling electrical items - did I dream this? Anyway, I took a lightbulb with me to check it worked and then carried it home while pushing Dan in the buggy. Got some strange looks but no-one took the opportunity for an amazing comedy moment by asking whether I had a light. Get it? Hahaha! I'm such a geek.

I couldn't bring myself to edit the surroundings while I took this picture - it's messy and dark and the lamp is where my aching arms plonked it when I got home (it's about as tall as me!). Our house is a breathtaking mess at the moment. This is our kitchen. I'm constantly amazed we aren't terribly ill.

My plan is to paint it and get a new shade - maybe I read Liz a bit too much?! She's a bit inspiring isn't she?

cowboy mikey & superdan

2009-09-27T19:54:00.003+01:00

There's nothing quite like seeing my boys in slightly shoddy handmade fancy dress. I love it!

baking for 5 year olds

2009-09-24T19:58:00.003+01:00

What do you do when your Godson asks for bright red cake pops for his 5th birthday party? Well, even though you may be thinking:

"Red? They'll look like injuries not food. How will I colour white chocolate without it turning pink? Isn't that going to be a lot of crazy e-numbers for a lot of crazy kids?"

Instead, of course you say:

"Absolutely! Anything you want my love. What a fabulous choice!" And worry about how it will look/work/affect young minds later.

Ethan has a thing for red. His grandad works at Old Trafford and so of course he is a united fan born and bred. He also likes fire engines and a particular power ranger - can you guess which one? He's deeply cute. After his first day at school a couple of weeks ago he came home and said to Lou, "mum, it was more fabulous than I ever imagined". Oh my goodness!!

So here are the pops:

Red kind of works actually. I take it all back, Ethan!

I decided not to give him this one. We don't want nightmares.

But oh the effect...

devon honeymoon

2009-09-22T19:26:00.005+01:00

We had a lovely honeymoon in Aveton Gifford staying in a gorgeous cottage that friends of my parents let us stay in for free. Many things were completely lovely - not least spending 24 hours a day with Dave which had never really happened before!

We were short drives from gorgeous beaches and lovely seaside towns - the picture shows Thurlstone in the gorgeous heat of an autumn evening. We visited Salcombe which took my breath away. I'd live there if only I were rich, liked sailing and had no desire to park my car ever again (busy, tiny roads!). We also went to the marble museum and saw the world's biggest marble run. Oh boy, it changed my life. We used wedding vouchers to get a PS2 (it was new in those days!) and whiled away hours playing Colin Mcrae rally (we'd be very glad of that purchase later in the week). I slept off all the pre-wedding stress. Blissful!

Looking back there were also a number of things that were to set the course of our married life. Things just kept going slightly wrong...

1) We did our first food shop as a married couple. It all went fine, we didn't disagree about what to buy, we were friendly to the checkout girl who chattily packed our shopping bags for us. But then, my card was declined. Dave's card was declined. I'd been working on a training year with a charity and Dave had been an assistant at a church - it turned out that meant we were poor! Our first shop as Mr. & Mrs. was left with the security guard as we scuttled into town and I got money out of my almost empty savings account. We paid, we left, we blushed and giggled.

2) We visited Plymouth. Urgh.

3) Two days before the end of our honeymoon we got into the car and Dave noticed the steering wheel had been wrenched off the column. In getting into the car I hadn't noticed my door had been broken into. In the scumbags' failed attempt at robbing our car of us they'd made the car totally undrivable. We took everything out of the boot and rang the RAC. We spent a day of honeymoon talking to crime scene investigators.

4) We were staying in a tiny village. At the time there was no shop. Our car was unusable. We couldn't leave. We had two days to kill. We ate beans and yorkshire pudding. It was all we had.

5) Instead of starting our new life in Leyland driving ourselves in blazing sunshine with crowds cheering, we drove 7 hours in a truck with Brian - a mixture between Brian Blessed, the incredible hulk and Father Christmas. He ate 200g bars of dairy milk like I eat a fudge finger. He was excellent company. His wife was a midwife and they would both work like mad for a stretch and then go away on lovely holidays for the weeks inbetween. This explained why he was willing to just turn right back round after the huge journey he'd done with us and head home - another 7 hours away. Crazy! So we arrived in Leyland with a broken car, in the pouring rain and in utter darkness.

Since then, really lots of things haven't quite gone right but with God's help they've always turned out well, there's always been a story to tell, there's always been plenty to make us laugh and we've always been glad we're in it together!

six years!

2009-09-20T13:00:00.006+01:00

Six years ago Dave and I got married! It was an incredibly hot day - the pashmina I had emboidered with sequins to match my dress was totally redundant. I had spent the day getting ready at our (now) brother in law's family home because mum and dad had recently moved to Bristol but we were marrying at the church I grew up attending in Thame. The wedding was at 4pm and I remember guests kept arriving and I kept making cups of tea and chatting until I looked at the clock at about 3pm and realised I really needed to shower and get my dress on!

The service was lovely - I had been so nervous about it because I'm not very good at being the centre of attention. I remember my nerves easing as I looked around and realised I was surrounded by my favourite people! I remember lovely music a great talk on Ephesians 5 and not being able to get my head round the idea that we were married! I was so relieved not to get the giggles - I'd barely managed a word during the rehearsal because I'd been laughing so much. Dave and I hadn't really seen each other much in the month before we got married - living a few hours apart, and I think just suddenly seeing him after so long and having to be very intense saying 'with my body I honour you' and holding hands in a particular way made me find the whole thing a bit hilarious!

We walked the 10 minute journey from church to my old school hall which my sisters had decorated amazingly - the last time I'd been in there I'd been doing my A Level exams. It felt much nicer this time! The time passed in a flash and neither Dave nor I managed to eat much of the buffet.

By 10.30 we were driving away. 23 years old, excited, nervous and totally sure we'd found our ideal in each other. I'll be 30 before our next anniversary and although the last 6 years have been hard going (and at times Dave and I have both longed for the simplicity of the single life) I can honestly say I still have to pinch myself wondering why I should be so lucky to have got Dave. I'm utterly grateful to God for my lovely husband. He's not perfect, but he's all I want! Thanks for sticking with me Daveyboy.

getting back in to the swing of things

2009-09-12T18:45:00.004+01:00

Oh hooray for normal routine and summer holidays being over! Mikey started back at school on Wednesday and it was like he'd never been away. He came home with a certificate yesterday:

The boy who, all summer long, ate nothing but toast, weetabix, apples and yogurt (oh and crisps and cake - but I didn't tell school that!) went back to school and fed himself a roast dinner. He can stay at the school until he's 19 and if he carries on eating so well at school I'm quite happy to wait 15 years before I have to try to cook him anything real.

I'm so proud of Mikey's confidence and how he copes with all the intensity of starting school with nothing but glee and enthusiasm! Each day he has come home from school so happy (and so full of calories!) that he literally runs in circles for half an hour, giggling breathlessly!

Mikey now does three full days and having that time with Dan was blissful! Dan and I went to shops that don't fit double pushchairs in them, met a friend for a fry-up breakfast and he walked home, did some cooking, had an indoor picnic on the floor in the lounge, drew with pens, sucked noodles off our plates - oh just lovely things that are doable with one and tricky/impossible with two (if Mikey is the no.2)!

I used vouchers to get the boys some play food for their new kitchen - it's wooden, sliceable stuff. Dan's favourite thing is the knife!

Dan spent about an hour yesterday just rincing our recycling and getting soaked in the process. I'm sure these are the kinds of things other mums do all the time, but for me it was a real novelty and such fun. It's unbelievably nice to be able to bake, cook, clean up while Dan's around rather than just saving it all for after bedtime. He's good company that one!

This last pic shows how lovely and sunny it is today (feels like a miracle after the incessant rain!), how much Dan likes pretending to do what we do and it shows what I was doing while Dave inspected the rather large crack in our windscreen. The car still feels new and exciting so it's pretty good for us to be reminded not to place any hope in things that moth and rust (and tiny stones) destroy. Flippin' tiny stone though... couldn't it have hit a car that was already rusty?!

Anyway, LOVING having a sunny saturday off and very much looking forward to a night in with Dave once he's back from the pub having watched the united match. I have a glass of Rose so the relaxation has begun!

solutions

2009-09-06T20:33:00.005+01:00

We've just got a new computer because we need to give Dave's work laptop back to church. It's mac mini and is very lovely! The idea is that having a desktop will mean we spend less time just looking at the computer while doing other things (eating, watching tv, cooking, listening to music, etc.) and therefore we'll have time to chat and actually make eye contact with one another. We'll see!

We had a stern letter yesterday telling us off for not sending a photo of Mikey for his blue badge which means we can park in spaces reserved for people with disabilities. "We assume you no longer want the badge". NO! It's just, well - have you ever tried to get a perfect head-shot of a three year old? Especially Mikey!

After attempting to take many, many of our own we resorted to a photo booth and are just hoping they won't notice Dave's shoulder in the shot.

How sweet is his little face?!

We also bought Mikey and Dan new winter coats after receiving a surprise gift last week (amazing, hey?). Mikey's coats need to be very warm as he finds it hard to regulate his temperature. They need to be resilient and not furry because he will spend all his time chewing the collar. The zip needs to be covered somehow because he tends to just unzip and take his coat off, even if it means he's cold. I've also resorted to making him wear my knee-socks on his hands up to the armpits instead of gloves because he takes gloves off and then sobs when his hands get cold! THIS coat seems to be the perfect solution - it even has gloves attached to the sleeves!

Foolish Alice, did you really think Mikey's plans could be thwarted? After one trip out in the pushchair, here's what happened to his glove:

Back to the knee socks.

atchoo!

2009-09-03T17:27:00.005+01:00

Mikey's perfected fake sneezing.

It seems to be catching cos Dan's doing it now - he's a bit more pantomime though.

In a country gripped by pandemic paranoia it's quite funny seeing people's faces as I push my compulsive-sneezathon boys around the shops. Shhh, nobody say "swine flu".

Dan the supergrump

2009-08-31T19:07:00.007+01:00

Today Dan has done lots of grumping. On a walk round town he spent the whole time saying "no, no, no" in a sanity destroying whiney voice! He's also been horrid with Dave - pushing him away and crying for me when Dave tries to do kind things for him - like bring him food!

But there have been a couple of nice moments in amongst the moaning so I'm dwelling on that!

We played a bit of footy in the garden. Dan loves playing with balls and is pretty fab at kicking, throwing, bouncing and catching - this video doesn't do him justice. We think he might secretly be called ZiDANe.

Then Harold and Jean came round after tea - the moment the doorbell went Dan's eyes lit up and he shouted "Manma!" (grandma) with delight! There's nothing like grandparents to show off to and to cheer him up! He got all giggly and tizzy with Harold.

Hooray for that!

cinder toffee cookies

2009-08-29T09:18:00.004+01:00

mmm, yummy.

treats and tears

2009-08-26T19:01:00.005+01:00

Two good things happened today!

Number one - the play kitchen we ordered last week arrived. We have been saving Mikey's birthday money since January and are now creating a play space for him and Dan in our basement. It will be specially Mikey-proofed and we are also getting a new bedroom ready for him when we can bring ourselves to put him in a bed. The kitchen even came in a GIANT box - great for playing!

Number two - we went to the Zoo with Dave's mum and dad. We'd been planning this for a while and had saved up our Tesco vouchers specially. I LOVE the zoo. I'm never sure whether I ought to ethically, but I think it's OK!

My favourite bit was when a Giraffe made friends with me. It felt really amazing to be totally face to face with her (apart from the glass!).

It was lovely having Harold and Jean there and the boys had fun with all the extra attention. If there was an exhibit or animal Dan liked he would take each of us there one by one to show us - taking us by the hand and saying "come on" and "what's this?" in a very squeaky voice. He really liked the fish, the camels, the giraffe, the penguins and the peacocks.

Mikey had a good time in moments of the day but was generally quite sad. I really want to work out how to give Mikey treats. He's so hard to fathom! He's active and full of energy so we thought being able to walk around at the Zoo would be lovely for him, but he seemed overwhelmed by the freedom. He wanted to be carried for moments but still cried, he was sad looking at a lot of animals and sad being put in the pushchair. He's often in a bit of a world of his own so doesn't see what everyone else is looking at. In many ways the whole occasion went totally over his head and he didn't have a great time. Then he cried when we set the kitchen up for him! Although once it was ready he played really sweetly.

How do I do it? How can I give Mikey experiences he will enjoy? Does it just involve being in the same routine each day - perhaps the things he likes that happen every day are better for him than unexpected things where he is not sure how to behave and can't anticipate what comes next. Perhaps he'll grow into it. It would be nice to find things that both the boys would feel excited by - Dan's love for the Zoo was pretty much equal to Mikey's displeasure! These are the challenges of being Mikey's mum. But I suppose this is similar to lots of parents whose kids have very different tastes and isn't just a disability thing. Mikey's highlight of the day seemed to be watching cars go past while we drove on the motorway. I'd do anything to get a similar burst of joy out of him!

Oh well. Hooray for an evening in with my handsome husband, a glass of wine and a Jonathan Creek DVD.

because I like it when my kids dance

2009-08-25T11:32:00.003+01:00

Especially to a bit of Michael Jackson!

the memory of a goat

2009-08-24T18:54:00.008+01:00

Back in May we visited Old Holly Farm in Garstang (which boastfully claims to be the world's first fairtrade town!). Mikey made firm friends with the little goats and the white one took a particular shine to him (and his shoes) as you can see above.

We went back today and I'm sure the slightly more grown up goat remembered him!

The pesky thing also wanted to eat me though.

Dan took a while to warm up to the animals but eventually he loved the two little piglets. I took a video which is the weirdest pale thing ever - Dan is glowing eerily. It sums up what Dan said when he saw most of the animals - he's attempting to say "bye bye goats."