First official day of introductions...

We started today at 10:30am at Grandma and Grandad's house for a planning meeting with our Social Worker; Katie's Social Worker; a Team Leader and Foster Carers.  Katie met us at the door and very quickly got out her picture book and the photo album and kitten books that we had given her (still being kept in the Holland and Barrett bag). Seeing her lug the bag along is hilarious so we took a picture to remember this.  It was so hard to pay attention to the meeting.  We took turns to play with Katie and try to listen to the plans being made for the coming week.  She is calling us mummy and daddy all the time now and is wanting to engage with us most of the time.  The plan is that we spent the morning until nap time today. Tomorrow we are going for wake-up time until nap time so we can do breakfast and then take her out for a while.  We are all going out for lunch tomorrow with Grandma as well.  Wednesday we are going for the afternoon and then putting Katie to bed.  Thursday we will be there most of the day and the same again on Friday.  Grandma and Grandad will bring Katie to our house on Saturday. They will stay for a while and then leave her with us for a while.  If she is anxious they will pick her up again after lunchtime but if she is ok then we will take her back home again for bedtime.  We will pick her up for our first Mothering Sunday and bring her to our house on Sunday.  We will do the same on Monday and Tuesday with hopefully one or both of those days being sleep over days!  We have a review meeting on Weds 17th March to see how it's going.  Who knows - if all is going well then she might just stay with us from that point onwards.  The one fly in the ointment is that Katie is still a bit poorly and didn't want to be left with another Foster Carer yesterday.  We have agreed to play it all by ear and see what happens over the coming days.

Katie is really starting to bond with us both now.  She took her book out again and is noticing more about the pictures.  She asked me about the easel in the playroom picture and said "painting?"  I told her that yes we would be painting there when she came to see us at our house; Katie's new house.  She is extremely good at sharing her time between both of us.  Daddy said that when I nipped out to visit the toilet she asked where mummy had gone, which was lovely.  She is definitely going to be a daddy's girl though!  She seems to understand that we are there for her and is loving the attention.  She showed us her picture CD with lots of pictures on since she was born all set to music.  We had seen the slide show before meeting Katie but she was very keen to share this with us.  She was singing along to Westlife which was really cute.

We are starting to notice more about her character.  She gets clumsy when she is tired.  She is such a cheerful little lady that she doesn't really complain or whinge but she starts to get heavy handed and trips up a lot when she is tired.  She loves me doing gymnastics with her and helping her do somersaults.  She hid under the table because she didn't want her lunchtime nap today which was funny.  She is a young lady who is starting to know what she wants and doesn't want.  Grandad said today that she is starting to choose which plate she wants to eat from and what cereal she wants each morning.

We spent time playing building blocks with her today. It was cold so we didn't venture outside.  She loved the brownies I made - so did Grandma!!  Grandma and I are both unable to eat gluten so she was delighted that I brought homemade gluten-free brownies today!  Katie loved her piece of cake!

Grandma is starting to fill us in on Katie's routine now so there is lots to remember and write in my book.

I had a really busy afternoon getting car seats fixed and buying a new stroller to fit in my little Beetle.  We have a fab stroller for in the local neighbourhood but it's too big for my car.  We are looking forward to taking that along for Katie to ride in when we go out for lunch tomorrow.  I am hunting for a new, larger, car now though - the Beetle is just too small sadly and won't be good for my back!!  Bye bye little Beetle!