27-Apr 2010

How LONG I have waited to type this post?!!

The Inter-agency meeting took from 10 to 12.30.  The very small room was packed full of people and was very hot!  We talked through and agreed the Adoption Placement Plan and all the support we would need from social workers, who to contact when and so on.  That took two hours!  Then Mungo had to feed the parking meter and it was onto introduction planning for the last half an hour.  We will have 10 days of intros, including today and then they move in on the 6th May :D wooo hooo!!

We were able to meet the social worker who removed the children and she told us a little about what it was like and how everyone reacted.  It was lovely (well, not really, but you know what I mean) to hear her memories and help us to piece together a little more of their history.  At 12.30 we said goodbye to everyone and went to the car for lunch.  We had an hour to wait so we went to a local country park where one of the intro days is going to be, so that we could get an idea of what it’s like.  We went for a walk in the sunshine – it was very hot – and nice to relax and chew over the meeting.

Then it was time, we couldn’t put it off any longer lol  We met with the children’s social worker outside the house and rang the doorbell....

Wow what a whirlwind of children!  Midge hugged each of us as we walked in the door and held my hand!  Tidge was shy at first and didn’t want to engage.  Squidge was asleep and then woke up a few minutes later. Then we played with their cars and Ben 10 Etch-a-sketch-type drawing board.  Midge was VERY chatty, bouncy and in your face.  Tidge slowly got used to us and after about ¾ of an hour she was sitting in my lap with the drawing board.  Squidge was determined to get into the cupboards where the toys were and Daddy had to help intervene.  We got to see what he was like having a tantrum, so that was really useful – but we didn’t run away!

We gave them the toys we had put in the pictures of our introductions books and Midge and Tidge wouldn't let go of them all the time we were there - yayy!

Midge and Daddy spent ages taking pictures with my camera.  We talked to Midge about when we were going to come back and the foster carer said “One sleep!”  So he got very excited again!  He asked me about my necklace and I asked him what he thought it was made of, he didn’t know so I said they were called diamonds.  He said “No, they are squares!”   So in the end we compromised with 'square diamonds' lol

At first Midge called us Mummy and Daddy, then he said ‘they’ and then he said ‘my other Mummy and Daddy.’  Every time, the social worker and foster carer corrected him into saying ‘forever Mummy and Daddy’, so it will take him some time to get used to it.  We will drop the ‘forever’ in time.  He is having ongoing ‘Life Story Work’ with a social worker to work through this with him, so he will come around.  Tidge didn’t really say much, she was very quiet but still bubbly when she got tickles.  Mummy is official tickler!  By the time we left (we had been there 1.5 hours) she didn’t want Mummy to go!  We didn’t want to leave either!

It was surreal, like it was happening to someone else.  I kept trying to be involved with their playing but I just wanted to watch them - it was simply amazing and goosebumpy.  We are really looking forward to spending lunch with them tomorrow!