It's a waiting game

So after the heady excitement of a couple of weeks ago we seem to be in a bit of a no-mans land.  No more excitement, no visual movement, no nothing.  We've had a couple of emails from our SW but nothing to write home about.

On Thursday our SW's boss is coming over for a '2nd opinion visit'.  I don't really have any idea what it involves but I'm guessing she'll be taking about our PAR, which hopefully should have been completed by then, and asking us any other questions she might have.  Luckily she has been to our home before so she should, fingers crossed, see all the changes we have implemented.  Let's hope she's proud!

On this very day, in exactly four weeks time, we will find out if we have been approved or not.
Four weeks.
"Not long to go", I hear you cry but in this process four weeks is like an eternity, especially with the prospect of our little one already waiting around the corner.
Four weeks.
Four long drawn out weeks with nothing to do but watch the clock.
Four weeks.
Not long when you consider we first started looking into this process 20 months ago. But then again four weeks is only the next barrier/hurdle we have to face.  Once that is out of the way the real waiting begins!

The last assessment visit

So that is it, for this stage anyway!!!  Yesterday we had the last of our assessment meetings with our social worker.  We won't be seeing her for another six week until we go to Approval Panel.  In that time she'll be writing up our PAR (Prospective Adopter's Report) and no doubt sending us countless emails to clarify bits of information we've spoken about over the last six months.  In fact, I've just got off the phone to her.

There seems to be lots of action going off in the background and things seem to be moving pretty fast so who knows what we'll be faced with next.  Can we really be as close to the end as it feels?  Can it be possible that we have already seen our little one??

Well that was a surprise!!!

Well, you could have knocked us both over sideways!

We had our penultimate meeting with our SW today and we knew it was going to be a tough one.  Not only were we both tired (long working days for both of us) but we were going to be going over our finances.  I had not been looking forward to it but in actual fact, that part wasn't that bad.

Our SW is really pushing us now as we are coming to the end of the assessment and she has always said that she wants us to be prepared and  today it became clear why.
In mid conversation she pulled out a stash of papers which included the advert-style profiles of three children the family finding team already have in mind for us.  You should have seen us when she gave us the papers.  It was like we'd been told we'd won the lotto, total shock and surprise.  It was certainly not what we were expecting, not tonight anyway.

Yet again, it's another stage where things become more real than they have ever been.  Suddenly we're  no longer talking about kids in care, we are talking about real children, with real names and real wants.  It's crazy to think that we may have already seen the face of our little one.

If we have seen you're face for the first time little one, we can't wait to meet you in person.  But who knows what the future holds in store, we may not have found you yet in which case we'll just keep on looking!