Your DNA's the Recipe

Your DNA's the recipe

With C, G, A and T

Your DNA's the recipe

But the baker, well, that's me.

The recipe says brown eyes,

Blonde curls, cheeky grin

But what makes you laugh, what makes you smile

Is the world you now live in.

We choose our ingredients carefully,

We take you outside to play,

We cuddle, kiss and encourage you

We tell you we love you each day.

 Your DNA made a brain like a sponge

 And we help you to fill it

 Your DNA made a beautiful smile

 And we help you to smile it.

 Your DNA made muscles

 And we help them to grow.

 But what made you sparky and funny

 I guess we'll never really know.

Your DNA's the recipe,

 Your DNA's the code.

 But what you become is down to you

 And we'll help you along the road.

 Your DNA's the recipe,

 But we'll throw in some extra bits,

 Some extra love, some extra care

 And hope it does the trick.

 Your DNA's the recipe,

 It gives us a bit of a clue.

 But how wonderfully brilliant you become,

 Is down to us...and you.

"Cuddle Mummy in the Rain"

This is what Squiblet said this afternoon and we went outside and danced around under her new umbrella.  It was one of those memories that I want to pickle and preserve for ever and ever!  All we needed was music playing and I would have felt like I was in some sort of cheesy film!

This week's WASO is about friends and I thought instead of my usual reams of text I'd go for a more concise approach.  People said that once we had a child all our friends would change.  Rubbish.  Clearly our friends were all keepers.  We have lots of wonderful new friends.  A fantastic mixture of friends with all kinds of experiences and careers and knowledge which means that Squiblet is so lucky because when she gets older she will have all this advice and love and diversity all around her.  I feel very lucky to have such a massive cushion of people who so genuinely care about us all...so this post is for you!

Thank you

I am your parent and they say I should not really be your friend
But you cheer me up when I'm sad, you listen and you love.
Thank you for being a friend.

I am your wife, your civil partner and have almost always been your friend
You listen, you cuddle, you're strong, you never judge, you are always.
Thank you for being a friend.

I am your friend and you have known me since I was a child
You travel for miles to see us, you offer your words and your care.
Thank you for being a friend.

I am your friend and we grew up and became adults together
You take your friendship duties seriously, you are practical and funny and you always listen.
Thank you for being a friend.

You are my family, your love and care made me who I am
You offer us time and rest and not too much advice, you listen and you don't judge.
Thank you for being a friend.

You are the people I met on this crazy old adoption journey
You understand, you are strong, you are funny and wise and you turn a crisis into a laugh.
Thank you for being a friend.

You are the friend round the corner who meets up for cups of tea and a chat
You listen and play and say all the right things and keep me updated on gossip.
Thank you for being a friend.

You are the people who came when I was finding my way and learning how to be a Mummy
The people who brought flowers and told me I was doing a good job when I felt like I wasn't.
Thank you for being a friend.

You are the caring social worker who has offered us advice and felt like a friend
It's not your job to be a friend but thank you.
Thank you for feeling like a friend.

Thank you


Sorry if that was cheesy!  I've not dipped my toe into any sort of poetry since I was at school.  It feels quite nice to be able to shape words again instead of just rambling on.

Love to everyone. x

This one’s for you.

When my friend was pregnant with her lovely twins, her and her husband set up email addresses for them and emailed them before they were born (I think it was on a google advert or something).  I seem to remember that we emailed them too.  Anyway, that’s not really the point.  The point is that this blog post is for you.  I can’t write your name or say where you are, but one day I will show you this blog and you will know that before you knew us, or could even remember us; we were thinking of you.  We were opening our hearts up to you, preparing for your arrival and hoping that everything would go well and that the beautiful little girl we had heard so much about, and who was smiling at us from a pixelated photograph, would become our baby girl.  And we are hoping that it won’t take too long because all we want to do now is give you a cuddle.

 

We heard about you this week; that you are doing well and are happy and settled with your foster carers.  We worry that when we take you away from there you will feel sad inside, but we know and hope that it will be worth it for you because we will love you forever and without question.  We heard about your birth Mummy, your birth father and your half brother and sister.  We were told that your birth Mummy had heard about us, and that she was very accepting that you would have two Mummies instead of a Mummy and a Daddy. We felt really happy about this.  When we heard about your birth Mummy’s life we felt sad for her, horribly sad that she had not been given the skills she needed so that she could look after you when she so desperately wanted to.  It makes me feel really sad that the world is not able to look after people enough that they can learn how to be parents, and I do worry that our society lets people down time and time again.  After the social worker had gone, we shed quite a few tears.  Some for you, because we were full of anticipation for what the future could be, and some for your birth Mummy, because her life was nothing like a life should be, and it just feels terribly unfair.  But your birth Mummy brought you into the world, so that we could love you, and we will.

 

We are going to meet your birth Mummy in the next few months if everything goes well with the paperwork etc.  We will meet with the doctor to hear about your health, meet with your birth Mummy and if everything is sorted in time, a big panel of people will approve us to be your new parents.  The plan is that you could move in early next year.  I hope everything goes according to plan this time.  We are ready for you, and having heard so much about you, we can’t wait to meet you.

 

If something goes wrong again, you won’t get to read this.  You won’t ever know that there were two people who saw your photograph and cried on a sunny day in October.  We will hold a little bit of you with us and wonder about you, but you will never know how close we came to becoming your parents and how much we wanted to be and how, even though we hadn’t met you, we sort of loved you a little bit.

 

Your Mummy (that’s me) has a very vivid imagination and currently I’m not sleeping well because I’m full of wonder and hope and I keep imagining the future with you in it.  I’m trying not to.  I’m trying hard to close my heart and slow down my brain, to try and protect myself in case something goes wrong again.  And we don’t want to say so out loud, let alone in print, but somehow this time it feels so right.  We have always slightly mocked people who say their adopted children look like them, as that in itself is unimportant, but you look like our child, your beautiful smiling face just looks like it belongs with us, and we can’t wait to meet you and to be your parents.

 

We have two months to wait until panel.  We have another meeting next week where we might find out more and might get some more medical information.  Mama is pessimistic that panel will happen in December, Mummy (me) is optimistic.  I can’t help hoping and crossing fingers, toes, limbs, hairs that it will go right for us this time.

 

So I’m a mess!  I’m an emotional wreck who is eating too much and sleeping too little and for some reason we decided that this weekend should be the weekend we destroy our bathroom to fit a nice new one.  At least there will be a nice new one ready for when you arrive...if you arrive...There is a seed of doubt from my brain but my heart is having none of it.  I’m just going to have to carry on wishing on rainbows and shooting stars that the feeling I have in my heart means that things are going to go right this time and that the beautiful little child we know so much about is going to become our beautiful little daughter.

 

x