two country dads

Hello lovely Blog, oh how I've missed you. Well these past five months have certainly been a journey. Some much change that my brain is rattling. But we took the plunge yesterday and called Guernsey adoption team to start the ball rolling. More on that in a mo. We have both now settled into working more creatively and are so much happier than sitting in our lovely little shop. It's also great to watch my parents taking the shop on from strength to strength. The building work on my mother in laws house should start soon so HOPEFULLY by the autumn we will have our separate accommodation. So all is shaping up for us to be ready to get a kid towards the end of the year /early next year. We have both swung dramatically, from not ever wanting children to being so sad that we haven't already got a family, over the past five months. I know at one point I started a sentence about our "freedom" and end up talking about family trips to the beach. One of the main reason...

Forgive the brief hiatus over the past three months but a lot has changed for us and I needed some space away from Adoption whilst I dealt with everything. But now I am back. I have just logged onto NFS for the first time in ages and it was great to be back on there. I think i can see myself getting addicted again. As the Title of this post says 2014 is, for us , a year of "New" New home New Island New Jobs New outlook New Family (hopefully) Let me explain fully. We were very close to being matched to the amazing young man from out of county. His SW was travelling 2 hours down to see us and I was thinking about him daily. i had started to think about schools and how we were going to sort out work etc. Every time we talked about how it would work there was something nagging at both of us. Adoption is an amazing journey of self exploration and it keeps on giving you new things. We realised that we had created a version of our life that we didn't really want. T...

It's been a big day in our house this morning. Ben and I have decided to put our adoption journey on hold for a few months. We are making lots of changes to the structure of our business and both are looking into retraining. We have always maintained that we can juggle the adoption and these changes and in theory we could, but we are both shattered with all the logistics and the financial uncertainty that come with the changes that we know we need to be responsible and step back, it may end up only being for 6 months over this winter but that would be enough to get us going again. It may end up being longer (if we considered retraining fully - I may do a degree?!) but after a long and very emotional talk this morning we feel that we would be ok to wait. We're only 33 and still feel that we have time on our side. It's hard as we have been so focused on adoption for over a year now that stepping back seems a little odd but we know, deep down under the sadness, that this is th...

Ok stay with me on this one ..... I don't mean to say kids are often red or green, unreliable and often a bit stinky - although!? We have been waiting to hear back from the SW of the profile we've read of an out of county child who we are really keen on but sadly haven't had a response. We know he has a new SW so this may have something to do with it. Then on Wednesday we get a call from our SW to say there is an in county profile they wanted us to look at so we have and we're going to try and get some more info on them as well. Last report was from May and they will have started preschool in Sept and it will be interesting to find out how that is going - they have some social anxieties that might make it challenging but will be very reviewing to see how the change is coped with. So "kids are like buses" refers to the frequency they turn up not the other things.

Profile received and read last night. I had to Skype Ben as he is still away and I wasn't waiting a whole day before reading the profile. It was all ok really, few questions that need clarification but he sounds like a good match to us. We text out SW last night and asked her to try and arrange a visit by his SW. Fingers crossed they think we're a good match. So ts a small step, but it's definitely a step in te right direction. So time for more waiting ......

It's a funny process really, Just over a year ago we went to an informal meeting about maybe adopting one day. We thought it would be about a three year wait until we actually had a kid moving in. Then you realise the whole thing is a lot quicker. Almost a year after starting our home visits we have been through a huge amount of naval gazing, talking about our childhoods, our relationships, our expectations etc. We have had the highs and lows of turning down two profiles. Then today I'm full of anxiety and tension about the possibility of the profile being dropped off tonight. From the brief profile he seems like a great match but what if there is more in his CPR, what if his SW doesn't think we're suitable, what if, what if .... What if so many things. So what has this process taught me about myself? I don't like waiting, I don't like being out of control, I form very strong attachments very quickly without a huge amount of information. I really want to be ...

FYI This post is mainly going to focus on the idea that I'm trying to be calm and not getting overexcited but I think it's only fair to tell you that the truth is my stomach is in knots and I want to jump around. I have to convince myself I'm calm and what will be will be. We spoke last week about maybe not looking at BMP for a while as it was getting us down not hearing back about enquires and also we were just getting a bit overwhelmed by it all. We met up with our friends who adopted two boys last month and we spent the morning with them and it was lovely, they have settled into the madness really well and it was so great to see them as a family. But it did make me very sad after. I felt like I needed to make it less of a priority. Hence not posting too much on here either. But ....... Last Sunday Ben had a glance thru BMP whilst we were having our tea and although I was trying not to engage with it he found a profile of a 4 year old boy who was very cute and his pro...