Oops

I forgot to say that our adoption was finalised about a week after I last wrote. I don't feel much different to be honest.

I have five minutes before the washing machine finishes and Baby Spouse is sitting in his high chair dropping toys. So this will be quick.

The washing is the 75th load after a very muddy festival experience. Baby Spouse has just learned to sit up on his own but can't yet crawl, so most of the mud was ours. We go to this festival every couple of years and saw lots of old friends and met some new. It was interesting to see how some people just say how gorgeous he is (no reference to adoption), others ask intelligent (or not) questions about the process, and others (new friends and those who were completely out of the loop) ask if we were at the festival the previous year (i.e. around 20 weeks gestation).

I had a very interesting, but very long, conversation with an old friend, which I will try to reproduce in full before I forget it.

I am hoping I will feel more "wow" about being a legal parent when we have our baptism and adoption celebration next month. However my mother is currently in another huff because we have the godparents and associated kids staying and we have said that she needs to find somewhere else to stay. She is too cheap to stay in a travelodge, and regards it as her right to stay at our house. We have told her it is not her business who sleeps at our house or where they sleep, as she seems to think we can squeeze her in a child bed in the baby's room.

And Mr Spouse has shown himself to be an expert in emotional blackmail by telling her we don't want to have to explain to Baby Spouse that his granny couldn't be bothered to come to his baptism so she isn't in the photos. He of course feels this particularly acutely because of losing his mother. Note that my father (long-pre-booked-travel) and brother (does not want to make another trip to the UK as he has just been here) aren't coming, in fact the only one of my 5 aunts and uncles and 11 cousins coming is the one who will be godparent (and their kids).

So although we have almost all of Mr Spouse's teeny family, and several friends, I don't have high hopes for feeling fabulously excited. But there will be cake. And a gown.

Tracking

The substitute for a court appearance to finalise Baby Spouse's adoption is a load of notarised paperwork (how surprising!). It's been to the relevant UK government department, back to us, and yesterday was FedExed to OHP, where it arrived today. Next stop is NLA-town, but as NLA can't deal with it, it will be going to Substitute Lawyer to take to court on an undetermined day. Will keep you posted.

Ooh

We just (this minute) got an email from big brother's (and I may as well call him that for the minute as Baby Spouse is never going to have another big brother) adoptive mother (she calls herself that, though the social worker, Nella and birth grandparents have variously called her foster or adoptive mother). She sent two photos and says (and I agree) that they look very alike!

Now we have to chat about how much to tell her, what contact details to give her etc. We already told Nella and birth grandparents that we are fine with them showing her photos (most of our photos are prints, not emailed).

I nearly deleted the email actually as the subject was his first name, which is one of "those" names that are sometimes the subject of spam messages! 

Wishing my life away

While waiting to be a mum, I found myself wondering what next year would hold, hoping we'd be parents by Christmas/Easter/summer/autumn. Like May, I found myself thinking "the next Olympics/conference/school year, we'll definitely be parents".  Not making plans for holidays or travel, in case we were pregnant/still pregnant/had a baby/a match.

Now I find myself making long term plans, including what we'll be doing on specific days next year, and these are also somewhat related to whether we will grow our family, but I am embracing it. Baby Spouse's nursery has quite rigid rules on taking holiday time, and we also want to schedule travel back to his birth state, hopefully seeing birth family, so we more or less know when our holiday will be taken next year (and I've decided where, but haven't persuaded Mr Spouse to book it yet).  

I'm also working on him to have my nieces to stay for a couple of weeks to practice for having more than one child (and also, whether we decide to adopt or foster, to persuade social workers that we can deal with sleeping problems [no 1] and extreme fussy eating [no 2] - as Baby Spouse so far is mainly completely laid back on both counts). And as I'm going to be working part time, and with things like Bank Holidays, my holiday time is almost all accounted for now.

And I'm very happy about that. Embracing it. In fact, I'm just going to check my preferred holiday venue for July 2013 is still free.

Our current uncertainty is, unfortunately, Mr Spouse's job situation. We are financially fine (we can't quite work out how, but a low interest rate = low mortgage payments, plus being generally stingy, we think), but he's nervous about what's going to happen, and we are still booking the nursery place for the days I'll work, for all our sakes.

In other news, I think I have said that Mr Spouse should be in the US finalising Baby Spouse's adoption this week, but our New Shiny Lawyer arranged for this not to happen (several thousand miles' travel for a 15 minute court appearance being rather wasteful).  We answered the same questions by deposition here this week, and they are on their way to Government Department from where we'll get them back next week and send them to Official Hague Person. I'll keep you posted.

P.S. Half an hour ago I left Baby Spouse with Mr Spouse to have a lie down, as I had a headache. He is now crying loudly (status: normal) in his high chair as his tea has not materialised as fast as he would like (i.e. 2 seconds before he got in the room). Although bottle feeds are more or less equally shared, I am slightly stressed, and Mr Spouse is trying to plead ignorance, about solids. The issue is not what to feed or whether Baby Spouse will take solids, it's just very very time consuming and messy, and ties us to the house more than previously. I am being a very bad mummy and leaving Mr Spouse to deal with this while I blog. He thinks I'm still lying down.

P.P.S. make that thought I was still lying down. He came upstairs for a nappy change just now. Busted.