Our second night and the Review Meeting

Last night sleeptime went well.  Katie was in bed nice and early - just after 7pm but woke up earlier today.  She was unusually awake from about 6:40am.  She woke herself up coughing so we laid in bed listening to her chatting to herself in her mirror.  It was great because this is what she does at Grandma's.  We let her chat for about 20 minutes before heading in to say hello.  We were due to go to Grandma's this morning at 10:30am for our Review Meeting and our official handover from Grandma.  It is an hour's drive to Grandma's so we were up and dressed nice and early today.  We had a call from our Social Worker to say that Grandma was poorly.  I had chatted to her last night so was aware that she wasn't well yesterday.  It was decided to move the meeting to our house instead.  Katie and I headed off to the park for a while because we had so much time to spare and I hoped that would mean she would have her nap quite early today because she'd be tired.

The Review Meeting went really well.  There were four Social Workers at the meeting.  They were delighted at how well it's all been going and how well Katie has settled in. Our Social Worker said you can never really tell with placements and she was surprised at how well it has gone considering how attached Katie was to Grandma and how long they originally thought it would take for her to settle with us. Our official placement date will be on Friday 19th March and Katie is now staying with us. We've got all the paperwork etc now.  Katie was very excited at everyone being at our house so we were very distracted trying to keep her occupied but it worked ok.  Katie's Social Worker will visit us on Friday to do the official handover then.

We are a bit short of clothes because we were supposed to be picking up all her clothes today and the ones I've bought are a bit big (dresses and skirts ok but trousers not) so we are heading off to Mothercare to get some more vests and a few smaller pairs of trousers to tide us over. We need a few woollies as well because I can barely keep up with the washing. We'll get her other clothes from Grandma soon though.

Bless her she was so tired today. She was up early and we were ready to head off to Grandma's so I took her to the park to wear her out a bit. She didn't do a dirty nappy yesterday so I was rewarded with the biggest mess I've ever seen in my life before lunch today!! She had an early lunch and was happy to go for a nap so we'll head off shopping in a few hours. She ran up to bed today - it was so funny!

Well I guess this is the start. We our now a family.  Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly from now on regarding the legal and official side of things.