Approved: A new Chapter Begins

Well, where do I start? How do I reduce such an important day to mere syllables, adjectives and nouns when I don't have the words to describe it? I'll go for the obvious and see where the keyboard takes me. 

Today we were approved to adopt Pip. Of course we still have to wait for the ADM (Agency Decision Maker to those of us not using the acronym) to tick his or her box on the sheet to approve it all formally but I'm not going to get anxious about that. I'm all out of anxiety after winding myself up in preparation for today. In fact I'm exhausted. I can't get myself wound up about it when the panel Chair used words like "serendipity" to describe the match. What are the odds of Katie's brother being granted a placement order the day after we were approved as adopters? There's no doubt in anyone's mind he was coming to join our family. 

The panel were lovely. There were very few questions and lots of support. It was as easy as a panel could be. They loved the pictures and sounds book we prepared for Pip. Oh the fun I had preparing that I can tell you. It shouldn't have been a difficult task, even for my lack of creative skills. We just needed to take some pictures; print those pictures; trim them to size and fit them in the correct spaces and then record the sounds to accompany said pictures. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Well it should have been but that's all well and good if your technology is doing what it's supposed to be (and the human involved isn't 8 days overdue for her monthly visitor about suffering from the worst bout of PMT in a wee while). We're also just in the process of changing Internet providers and it's incredibly interesting how unreliable our Internet has been this week as we prepare to leave our current provider on Friday.

I digress. Back to the technology. Why, you may ask (with some justification), was I attempting to email all the pictures to myself when I could have just plugged my phone into the laptop? Good question. I had a momentary lapse in my whizz kid technological skills probably due to the PMT fog my brain has been reduced to. However it was the lack of emails arriving that alerted me to the fact that there was a problem with my Googlemail and the scary fact that this blog had also disappeared. Panic stations time! My heart was pounding! I felt sick with worry! What had I done, I asked myself? Had I broken a law of some kind? My worst blog fears were coming true. Time to self host methinks! Mind you, I do wonder if Google was protecting me from a hacker.  It took me an hour to reset all the passwords and access my email and blog. Only to find the pictures hadn't arrived so I plugged the phone into the laptop (finally). This wasn't as straightforward as it sounds because my lovely Samsung Note had a surprise new operating software download the day prior to all this and hasn't been working properly ever since (this week has challenged me technically in so many ways I can tell you and I'm still struggling with emails). Anyway, after two hours the pictures were printed and trimmed and then I fought with the book for half an hour to get them into the sleeves ready for Daddy, Katie and me to record all the sounds.

It's such a shame I can't upload the video of the book to show you, however I take Katie's safety very seriously and the book has lots of pics of her and uses her proper name so I'm afraid I can't. I will say that Katie's recording of the cats miaowing and purring was priceless! So funny! Panel loved it and hopefully so will Pip.

So we are meeting Pip on 21st May and Katie will have her first meeting with him on 24th May. We won't be telling her we're meeting him before her. We don't think that would go down very well. I think she'd find that somhard to process and i couldnt do that to her. The hope is that he will be home with us during half term week, just one week after that first meeting. It's getting so close. I can't wait for that first cuddle. 

We have been warned by the SWs, Medical Adviser and Uncle Tom Cobbley that Pip is a bit of a chunk. It sounds like I'll be building up some serious biceps soon. I've been joking I'll need a back brace! He is as round as he is long. He's 6 months but bursting out of the 6-9 months clothes apparently. I have visions of buttons popping off and whizzing around the room!  The picture they showed us today did the poor wee lad no favours at all. I don't think a shirt is a good look when you have three chins! I can't wait to hold him though and I rather suspect the weight thing will resolve itself once he's mobile and weaned. We have a theory that SWs show you the worst picture imaginable just to make sure you'll love them despite anything else. It was the same for Katie's first pic as well. Her picture bore no resemblance to the child we met. 

So 13 days to go.

13 days until our family triangle has an extra corner and turns into a square.

I'm a mum-to-be and I can't wait.

But for now I need to sleep. Those who know me well know I have an emotional delay default button. I haven't cried today (well I did but it was only when I bashed my hand). I shed happy tears and sad tears but rarely at the right time. I'm too tired to access all the emotions right now. I'm emotionally drained. They will come. Probably in the middle of Greys Anatomy. Greys is brilliant for accessing emotions and purging yourself of them. I recommend it to everyone. 

Thank you to everyone who has been supporting us throughout this adoption. You've all kept me going and I am so grateful to you all. I can't wait to share the next chapter with you just as I shared Katie's first chapter with us right back in March 2010 when I started this blog.