Linked!

Hello,

I'm not sure whether I should be writing this or not as I don't want to jinx things, but then that's not really in the spirit of blogging, is it?!

So, after my whingey old moan bag of a post last time what happens...? Our social worker calls and tells us they have made a link with a sibling pair! I'm not going to give any details just in case but they are both under three so...wow!  Amazing. The reason she wasn't available to talk to me was because they hadn't had their official linking meeting and she was worried she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret if she spoke to me!  So there we are.

We have a meeting with our social worker and the children's social worker on Monday and then we will decide if we agree to the match.

We will have to ask loads and loads of questions.  I think I'm going to type up answers on the laptop as we go as this is undoubtedly going to be the biggest decision of our whole lives.  And it's so hard!
Because you just don't know how their life experiences will manifest as they grow, and you have to try to decide what sort of trauma you can manage and where you would be best placed to therapeutically parent them.  So we are excited and scared and nervous and hopeful and a million other emotions.  We have even been given names, which is lovely as we can think about them as real people, but we have avoided talking about them too much until after Monday when we will know more definitely whether we think they are a good match for us.  We have only really told people who came with us on our adoption journey, so far. I'm not going to worry my workplace until we know for sure so I will call them after Monday I think.

As a distraction technique on Sunday I made a treasure map for the wall on one of the bedrooms.  It is decorated with hot air balloons with children riding in them, clearly on an adventure and I just wanted it to have a real sense of adventure on there!  But instead of just making a fictional one, all the places are relevant to our friends and family, like there's a Rose Cottage named after one of our friends, and Lake Louise where we got engaged!  The whole family is on it! I think it's pretty cool...I even did the teabag staining and burned round the edges!  Unfortunately I can't share it on here because it would be a bit too identity revealing!  It's a bit like the map we had to do for our PAR of our support network only kid friendly. Luckily our family seem to have names that fit well with places!

So we have been busy putting up more storage and trying to get ready but not in a specific to these children kind of way.

Something about it feels very right now that we have settled down, but we still have to be sensible and measured and not get carried away with our emotions.  Much easier said than done.

It's just unbelievable that I've been blogging for just over a year now and we have been linked.  It's not taken nearly as long as we thought. I'm glad we timed it right so our extension etc were finished off and we don't have anything to worry about.  I've decided that I'm going to take photographs of all the breakable things we had as wedding presents so that if anything gets broken and the children can see on my face that I'm sad I can say "well, it was an accident so I'm not cross, but I am a bit sad because it was a wedding present from...but don't worry because I have a picture of it so I can remember it that way and still be happy".  I'm hoping that will work!

And that's all for now!

I will be in touch when we know more :)