Black Kids in White Houses

Follow this LINK to a fantastically thought provoking article on transracial adoption. It has both scared and worried me about our impending adoption, and got me seriously wondering if we are doing the right thing. We are bringing a black child from Ethiopia to live in a rural English village where you can count the number of ethnic minority families on one hand. I think having a family is much better than growing up parentless in an orphanage, but growing up in a black family or a white family in a much more diverse area would be a lot better for her too. We can't offer that. We are going to have to work extremely hard to build and maintain connections with the black (and hopefully the Ethiopian) community around us. I am going to have to step out of my comfort zone and be the uncomfortable one - why should a child constantly have to bear that burden. One that she hasn't chosen or asked for, we are the ones making the choices and we should be the ones bearing the brunt of the consequences of those choices. I just hope that somehow we can make this work for both our not (yet) so obviously transracially adopted Little Prince and our future Ethiopian daughter.

Heard from DCSF

Mr Messy has just dragged me out of bed, where I was having a lovely, warm snuggly lie in. But I don't mind because it was to show me the letter from the DCSF saying they had received our paperwork safely from our Local Authority. Even though I already knew that our papers were safely in the hands of the DCSF, because I got anal and rang them lol, its fantastic to have it officially written down in writing :-)

BUT behind that letter was another letter!! This letter says that the DCSF have ISSUED our Certificate of Eligibility (the formal piece of paper we need to confirm we can adopt from overseas). They've issued it and sent everything to our Notary!!!!! I was expecting another week or so (being VERY optimistic) or month or so (being realistic) before this happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our Notary reckons it takes him about 7-10 days to process everything before he returns it all to the DCSF and then they say it takes another week to get it all off to Ethiopia!!!! That means our papers could be sent to Ethiopia BEFORE Christmas!!!!!! WOW OMG and WOW!!!!!!!

Realisations

Its just beginning to hit me that there could already be a little girl lying alone in a cot in an orphanage in Ethiopia who will one day become our daughter. She could have already lost the person and family she should have been able to depend on for the rest of her life. She could be hungry. She could be cold. She could be ill. She could be my baby one day and I'm not there to look after her. Just like I wasn't for Little Prince's first 19 months. Little babies are so vulnerable and helpless they need someone there to look after them. I am sure that the orphanage workers do their very best within the resources they have. But they aren't Mothers or Fathers. The children in their care, however well looked after and however well loved they are, aren't their children. The workers can go home at night to their own families but the babies and children can't. They don't have families and that is so so wrong. How can little babies and children NOT have families? I know about the reasons that babies and children can end up in orphanages, poverty, illness, government decrees on family size. But how can this be allowed to happen? How can I be allowed to gain so much from such profound loss halfway across the world? How can this be right? And how can I bear to know that my daughter, my child, my baby is living in an orphanage without me to care for her? And one day I will have to explain all this to her, when I don't know myself how or why it is possible...

Another OMG moment!!!

Someone has just posted on the UK chat group that they have been issued with their Certificate of Eligibility and their papers are off to the Notary. Fine I hear you say and.... Well AND they passed panel in the same week we did!!! So the accelerated timescales that DCSF told me about could be true!!!!!!!! I am shaking like a leaf and have had to type this message about three times due to all the overexcited typos I keep making!!!! And there is about to be a world shortage of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Somebody pinch me!! Better yet punch me!!!! This is all happening!!!!!! I think I'm going to have to go and have a lie down!!!!!! I can't take the excitement/anticipation/fear/worry and all the other emotions whirling round in my head at the moment!!!!!

Feeling human again :-)

I've just had a shower for the first time since I hurt my foot on Monday and it feels so good to be clean again :-)

I've spoken to the DCSF again and the person I spoke to had our dossier on her desk being processed! She said there wasn't a problem and the only reason that an "acknowledgment letter" hadn't been issued was that they were checking everything was in order due to our change of country. I presume that they have to check that we have formally withdrawn our application from China and that we aren't trying to do two adoptions at once. She confirmed that the letter should be with us by the end of the week!!

I've also chased up the missing document that we need to send to our Notary. And apparently it is almost ready and we should have everything sorted out in the next few days if we get a move on!! I've chased everyone I can in regard to it, so I just hope they all get their fingers out and get things moving!! So it looks like everything is coming together nicely :-) Wouldn't it be great to have everything sorted and sent to Ethiopia before Christmas :-)

Toes :-)

I am beginning to think (and hope!) that my toes are only badly bruised rather than broken :-) This morning I was able to get out of bed without feeling like I was going to throw up with pain :-) They are still extremely painful and its still very difficult to walk, but its not quite so bad as it was yesterday or Monday :-) And I've found some shoes I can wear - so I can ditch the ever so stylish plastic bag over sock look!! With apologies to LMS and Drama Teen but its CROCS!!! My friend Ironing Lady picked up our ironing pile yesterday evening and was asking what was wrong, and when I explained she offered to lend me her crocs until I feel better. She went straight round to her house and brought them and they fit and I can get them on and walk in them :-) I know they are ugly shoes and that LMS and Drama Teen hate them with a passion, but I don't care - I can go out in public and WALK while wearing them!! I've kept them on around the house, as our tiled floors have been making my feet so so cold, and they feel so comfy and warm!!! I've even managed to make it over to the Post Office too :-) Ironing Lady also suggested 'piggy backing' Ibuprofens and Paracetemol tablets, so that there isn't a painful stage when one lot of tablets are wearing off before its time to take any more. And that is working fantastically too, I don't know why I didn't think of it myself as that is what has been recommended for Drama Teen after her operations!! I do wonder if that is why my toes are feeling better and why I'm able to move around a lot more easily, but at least its working :-)

The fact that Mr Messy is back home again is also helping enormously too :-) He arrived back last night bearing gifts of chocolate and Ibuprofens - I'm not sure which I appreciated most lol. Just knowing he is home (even if he is currently at work lol) and can help me out has taken so much pressure off and lifted my mood considerably :-) And he's just told me that he's arranged to work from home for the rest of the week, so that is even better :-) He can drive me bonkers and be totally annoying, but he is also the most generous, kind and loving man I know and I'm very lucky to have him. Just don't tell him I said that lol.

Scary Timescales!!!!

I've heard from our Notary again and all our documents are in order and he has now safely returned our Passports to us. I am still chasing up the last piece of missing paperwork, and hope to be able to get hold of it soon! I've also spoken to a lovely lady at the DCSF who confirmed that our dossier is in their hands and they have started processing it. We should get the "acknowledgment of receipt" letter later this week or early next week, and then it should only take them a week to print the Certificate of Eligibility. I am taking the latter statement with an enormous pinch of salt, as this would be lightning fast compared with their usual speeds!! But just for a moment or two it is nice to believe that this could be true.

Once our Certificate of Eligibility is issued then our papers are passed to our Notary, who takes just over a week to process everything through the various procedures and then return it to the DCSF!! The DCSF have said it will then take them another week to get the papers to Ethiopia and we could be asked to consider a child anytime after that!! OMG until I just added up all the 24 hours for this bit, 2-3 days for that bit I hadn't realised quite how quickly this could all happen!!! I was thinking another 6-8 weeks not another 2-3 weeks!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!

I am trying so hard not to let myself believe this, but I want to believe. I want to believe we could have an idea of who our new little one is before Christmas. I want to believe that we could complete our adoption early next year. I want to believe that this is all going to work out. But after everything that has gone before I don't know that I can - but still I want to believe...

Highs Lows and Broken Toes!!

Our photographs finally arrived on Friday and my lovely Ethiopian friend came round after school and wrote labels for them all in Amharic. This isn't strictly necessary as UK dossiers are translated in Ethiopia, but I thought that as I had my friend ready and able (and desperate to help somehow) to do this that it showed a little respect for Ethiopian culture. Plus it helped my friend feel needed and got us chatting about how she could help our future little one learn about their shared birth culture and country.

So first thing on Saturday morning I got all the documents together and sent Special Delivery to our Notary. Unfortunately we are still missing one vital piece of paper, but the Notary has advised that we get what we can to him so that he can start working on that and hopefully (fingers crossed) the missing document will be available soon and we can complete our dossier. I have just heard from someone in the UK who's papers have been at the DCSF for about a month, that their papers have now been sent to their Notary. And that the Notary may be able to send the papers to Ethiopia themselves, and not have to go back via DCSF (which can slow things down considerably). This would be amazing if it turns out to be true - although as with most of what the DCSF say, I'm currently taking it with a HUGE grain of salt! I'll be trying to contact them myself tomorrow, just to check that they have safely received our dossier from our Local Authority, and see if they will say what the next steps are! Wish me luck, I'll need it as they are notoriously uncommunicative and unco-operative!!

On Saturday we took Little Prince to the local Clarks shop to have his school shoes and trainers checked to make sure they still fit. Luckily they do :-) We also bought him some new PE pumps as his last PE kit was stolen from school!! This is despite every single item being labelled with his name!! I'd already had to purchase a new PE bag and PE t-shirt in the school colours from the school office. Whilst complaining about the fact that his previous kit 'disappeared' from school!!

On Sunday me, Little Prince and Mr Messy went to a large baby shop to check out my shortlisted buggies. Unfortunately the shop was only able to show us one of the models (Confort Bebe Loola Up) as they aren't trained to show the Bugaboo range!! We are planning to go to an even bigger branch to see the Bugaboo Chameleon and Bee models, but they will have to be pretty spectacular to persuade me to buy one as I have fallen in love with the Loola Up :-) In cream and chocolate (what else lol) colourway - gorgeous, sturdy, folds up smallish (we both have big car boots) and seems to tick all the boxes of what I'm looking for in a baby buggy. Later that day Mr Messy left on his way to the next part in his photography business training, they are covering Sales and Marketing this time. I was very upset that he was going and decided to take the children out for tea rather than cook, and to cheer myself up. One of Drama Teen's friends had come over so we went to the restaurant on the way to dropping him off at home. We had to leave pretty early as we HAD to be back in time for I'm a Celebrity - my favourite trash tv show lol.

This morning I was tired, very very tired. I hate it when Mr Messy is away and never sleep very well, and I'd stayed up till 2.30am reading to try and tire myself out!! I decided this had been a VERY stupid thing to do when I had to drag myself out of bed this morning lol. Everything was going well, I'd got the kids up and out of bed and was just going downstairs to start making everyone's breakfasts, when things went downhill - literally!! I slipped on the stairs, and bumped down most of them on my bum!! When I stopped at them bottom and tried to stand up I realised I had hurt my foot too!! I felt sick and woozy and in considerable pain and had to go and lie down on the sofa and instruct Drama Teen to get Little Prince's breakfast - which she did, thank you so much Drama Teen.

I lay there for a while and my foot/toe wasn't getting any better and in fact seemed to be getting worse! After a few gentle pokes at my toes I came to the conclusion that I had probably broken my little toe!! I got Drama Teen to get me some painkillers which eventually helped a little and gritted my teeth and managed to get Little Prince ready for school. Trying to get my boots on to go up to school proved impossible, I had to wear one boot and my soft indoor slipper on my sore foot, and even that was agony! My car is automatic so I didn't need to use my injured left foot to drive (thank goodness) and managed to get Little Prince to school and park right outside the gate and let him run inside himself. I was in total agony and cried all the way home!!

I'd not been home long when my friend Post Lady arrived to see how I was, I'd texted her earlier to ask if she could run me up to Casualty once she'd finished her morning deliveries. She insisted on taking me straight to the village GP's surgery where I was seen almost immediately by the doctor. He poked and prodded my whole foot and all my toes, which made me cry with pain. He said that my toe could either be badly bruised or broken, and that the treatment was the same regardless of which it was! He advised trying to strap my toe to its neighbour and to keep taking painkillers, although he did say that wearing two pairs of socks would help to hold my toe still while it was still too painful to strap up.

So I've spent the rest of the day on the sofa reading with my foot up! So far it hasn't helped and I'm still in agony!! When Mr Messy is home I'm going to get him to get me some extra strong Ibuprofen, hopefully that will help a bit more!! I've had to cancel or postpone all sorts of appointments and I'm starting to panic about Christmas!! Fingers crossed that my toe (well toes as another one has turned black and blue too!) is only badly bruised and that I'll recover quickly!!

Post Lady was a star and brought Little Prince home from school for me, and was very apologetic that she would be at work tomorrow and wouldn't be able to drop him off!! I'm sure I can manage that, the same way I did today - take him late and drop him at the door so that I don't have to get out of the car, apart from opening the door and unstrapping his seat belt for him.

Drama Teen has been a complete star too, she has been so helpful and caring and her and Little Prince have renamed themselves Team Helper Outerers (they were Team Chaos!). She got herself to her guitar lesson this evening with no whinging (normally she moans and groans about having to walk there in the dark or bad weather). I got myself and Little Prince in the car to pick her up, and then go to the little shop in the next village to get some basic foods in to last until our online grocery order arrives. None of my shoes, slippers or even my super loose wellies were wearable so I had to drive with a plastic bag on my foot - good job I didn't get out of the car lol.

We have just got back home again and Drama Teen and Little Prince put all the shopping away, with no arguing or falling out :-) And now Drama Teen is putting Little Prince to bed for me, and when she gets downstairs she said she would make me something to eat. She is a little star :-)

Even though LMS is away at university she is also trying her best to help out, and even offered to drive home to come and help me out. She has never driven that far before and although I've declined the offer, I really appreciate the fact that she made it. You are another little star LMS :-)

What we've been doing

During yesterday I did so much running round! I collected Mr Messy's framed photograph from the framers, he needs it for Mon/Tues next week when he is at the photography training again. The framers did a fantastic job, which is great as this was the 'test' for using them as Mr Messy's business framers. We also found someone in our village who prints and mounts canvases from photographs, and he delievered his sample print too. We weren't as impressed by this as by the framing! The quality of the printing was excellent but the finishing of the stretch frame at the back left a bit to be desired. Mr Messy is going to contact the man involved and see if he can do a better job, and if so will probably use him for making canvases of 'friends and family' shoots. For his proper business clients he will be using a much more expensive firm! I also had to call at the bank to get the money to pay the builders, who called round to collect their money for building the wall. They came in for a chat and I quizzed the young assistant on his experiences with being diagnosed with ADHD and being prescribed Ritalin. It made for a sobering conversation. I also got in touch with the Benefits Agency to ask for a claim pack for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) as suggested by our GP when we first saw him regarding Little Prince's difficulties. I had been putting this off, as it means publically admitting that Little Prince is 'disabled' and also the forms we will have to fill in are very upsetting. We have to put down the absolute worst behaviour and difficulties that Little Prince has and I'm dreading doing that and seeing it in black and white :-( So I spent yesterday afternoon/evening feeling quite down about it all, and have even been questioning my ability to cope with Little Prince's difficulties and a new little one :-( What am I getting myself into? Can I do this? I just don't know at the moment :-(

Yesterday Little Prince attended the second of his after school sports club meetings. He wasn't happy about going but was persuaded to give it another try. When I picked him up he said he didn't enjoy it and definitely didn't want to go ever again. I'm trying to look on the positive side of this - last year he only managed one session and completely fell apart once he got home, sobbing and clinging and adamant he didn't want to go again. This time he has managed two sessions and been able to verbally tell me that he didn't enjoy it and doesn't want to attend again, we've not had tears or clinginess this time. I gave him a Kinder Egg for being brave, but he told me "Mum, I wasn't as brave as you think, I was scared and I missed you." Poor little honeybunny :-( Well we can always try again next year and see how he gets on.

After collecting Little Prince we had to rush over and collect Drama Teen from her after school revision class. She has some exams this week that count towards her final GCSE grades and school had arranged these extra revision classes for the students taking the exams. The trouble was sports club and revision class both finished at the same time! Luckily Drama Teen was able to walk round to a friend's house near school and wait for me there.

Later in the evening Post Lady picked me up to go to Weight Watchers together (yes I'm back there yet again!!). We got to the venue only to be told it had been cancelled! The usual leader was unable to come, so a substitute had been sent, who managed to take a wrong turning and end up in someone's garden. She then managed to jam her car on this garden's rockery while trying to get out!!! I couldn't stop laughing :-)

Where are my PHOTOS!!!!

The last thing we need for our adoption dossier, to send to our Notary, is the photographs showing family life. This should be the simplest bit of the whole process!! Well, guess what?!?! It isn't!!! Just getting a photo of us all together (with LMS off at uni) was a trial, and then persuading Mr Messy to have his picture taken was another ordeal! But this weekend we sorted everything out and ordered the photos online. Normally they arrive the very next day, but they STILL aren't here!!! I am going spare!!! I want to get my Ethiopian friend to label the photographs in Amharic for me before sending them (and all the rest of the documents) to the Notary, but I can't as the d*mn things aren't here!!!!! Aaaaaargh!!!!!!

I'm back :-)

I've been having a BUSY BUSY time and haven't had time to blog, apologies to all my friends who have been worrying and wondering where I am :-) Sorry to worry you all and each of you who emailed to ask if I was ok - thank you so much for caring and being so sweet :-)

I'm not going to do a day by day account of what we've been doing as it would take much too long, I'll just give you the edited highlights!!

We finally came to the decision to get a new builder in to finish our garden wall. It was a difficult decision to make as our original builder is the son of a very good friend and he has been quite ill and that was why he hadn't been working on our wall. However, this has been going on since before the Summer and we still only had a couple of courses of bricks laid. Our friend (mother of the builder) was a bit surprised and I think a bit upset that we had made this decision and I really wish we hadn't had to do it. But we are getting closer and closer to our new little one joining our family and we need to have the garden safe before she arrives. New Builder has been here every day for the last week or so, and has been working as hard as he can (between rain storms and fading light in the evenings) and TODAY is the day it is all going to be finished :-) The bricks we bought are fairly old looking, so the wall doesn't stand out like a sore thumb next to the house and it looks high enough and sturdy enough to withstand assaults by our small garden warrior aka Little Prince :-) Unfortunately the garden has been completely trashed, there is a worn, sandy path across the lawn and the nicely dug out bed in front of the wall is covered in sand and blobs of mixed and solidified concrete! It is going to take a LOT of hard work to get it back to a usable state, let alone looking nice!! Drama Teen and Little Prince did do a lot of work weeding and picking up rubbish and windblown apples over the weekend and have made a great start - well done you two :-)

Drama Teen has been suffering with a bad back for a while now, which as she is only 14 is quite worrying! We decided to order her a new mattress, which arrived last week and she seems to be slowly improving now :-)

LMS came home for a weekend visit so that me, her and Little Prince could go to see a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The show was fantastic, as always, and Little Prince who learnt the songs at school last term, was mesmerised by the whole thing. When the orchestra played the introduction and there was just a 'scenic' curtain covering the stage, he was quite perturbed and wondered if that was it? And pronounced it 'boring'! But as soon as the curtain rose and the performers appeared he was entranced. He sang along to all the songs and hardly moved or spoke during the whole performance - a HUGE achievement for him :-) We had gone to see the show with my friend Post Lady and her husband and two daughters (the youngest of which is Little Prince's on/off girlfriend lol) and after the show we all went to a Chinese Buffet restaurant for a meal together. The children didn't each much of the main courses, but loved the desserts - typical kids!!

While LMS was here she and I visited an exhibition devoted to baby stuff!! We spent a good few hours there, checking out all the yummy mummy changing bags and new fangled gadgets that didn't even exist when my lot were small!! But the main purpose of our visit was to check out the rearward facing buggies, I definitely want a rearward facing one as that promotes both attachment and language development, but they are few and far between (and mega expensive!) these days! I now think I have narrowed my choice down to one of two (or three lol) different models and just need to go to a large baby shop to have one last look before finalising my choice.

I have also started to sort out the Christmas shopping. Me and Post Lady have been on quite a few shopping trips and I am really pleased with how much I've already got organised :-) Me and Drama Teen were going to get on with some wrapping up when her school was unexpectedly shut due to maintenance problems, but the school managed to make provision for the Year 10s and 11s to attend and so she had to go back to school. I am determined to be a lot more organised this year and NOT to be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, so I had better get on with it!! I bought myself a proper office sellotape dispenser, which should make the job a whole lot easier than it usually is (cutting little bits of sellotape and sticking them to the edge of the table while wrapping!!).

Mr Messy has been very busy getting on with his long list of jobs from his photography training and seems to be slowly ploughing his way through it. He has also attended a couple more two day training sessions, and been "second shooter" at a couple of weddings. He took the photographs to the bride and she was in tears they were so good :-) Although she did then go through and ask if he could 'airbrush' loads of different things in each photo - he was warned she was a bit of a princess lol.

Little Prince has had another visit to the Paediatrician who has confirmed that nothing untoward showed up in the blood tests that Little Prince had. We hadn't expected anything to show up, but it is good to have that confirmed officially :-) The Paediatrician is going to chase up the appointment with the Speech and Language Therapist, but doesn't feel it will show up anything too significant, and said we shouldn't worry that it is taking so long to get the appointment through. He asked how Little Prince was coping in school, and how supportive school was being, and as they are being fantastic with Little Prince and he is making very good progress the Paediatrician doesn't think there is any need for any more interventions at this point in time. He has asked to see Little Prince again in 12 months time, to reassess how he is, as he says that as Little Prince grows older there will be different expectations of him and problems could emerge due to that. He did also mention that medication (Ritalin) could be warrented in the future, depending on how me and Mr Messy feel about that, and on how Little Prince is coping (or not) in school. Luckily he is not the sort of doctor who gives the medicine at the drop of a hat and sends you on your way, so I feel confident that we will be able to discuss this and decide if it is needed or not when the time comes.

We are also in the midst of planning a wedding!! A fake wedding!! My Baby Sis and her fiance have been persuaded to act as a Bride and Groom for a photo shoot Mr Messy wants to do for his portfolio. We have organised a wedding dress, shoes, veil (almost!), flowers and even a Chief Bridesmaid! Although the vintage wedding car isn't available as Mad Cat Lady's parents are away on the day of the 'wedding'! The dress arrived today and looks gorgeous and I'm sure Baby Sis will look stunning in it :-) It has been exciting organising this 'wedding' and I just wish they really were getting married - then I could totally go to town with it lol.

And if all that wasn't enough stuff to be getting on with, our Local Authority has finally sent our dossier to the DCSF. Which means I have had to get the last bits of paperwork together to send to our Notary ready for when the DCSF send him our dossier to Notarise. And there is one piece of important paperwork that I can't seem to get hold of no matter how hard I try! The Notary has now said send everything I already have, and forward the last piece as soon as I have it! I think the hardest part of getting the paperwork together (apart from the above missing bit!) has been to persuade everyone to pose for the photographs we need! Mr Messy and Drama Teen are very talented photographers, but persuading them to be in front of the camera has been quite the challenge!!

So that's it our "news in brief" I'll try not to go AWOL again, but with Christmas rapidly approaching I can't promise to blog every day!

Lets all fly...

Leaving politics out of this, and concentrating solely on the fact that minority people the world over can see that the sky's the limit. I've just seen this quoted on one of my forums and it perfectly sums up what I feel.

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk
Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run
Obama ran so black children could fly!!

Lets hope all the children get to fly one day :-)

Signed Sealed and almost Delivered!

Me and Mr Messy went off to our Local Authority offices this morning to check through the dossier and to sign all the letters/forms we needed to sign. We checked through the dossier twice and it all looks to be there. It can't be that easy!! Admin Lady said the same thing, that she keeps thinking there must be something she is missing as it has all gone much too easily!!! The dossier will go to the DCSF on Monday and they will send the bits they have prepared to our Notary too. Wow!! Things are on their way!!

I read through the minutes of our Panel Meeting, not sure if I should or not, but if they didn't want me to they wouldn't have left me with the paperwork!! And according to the paperwork not all Panel Members supported our application! The objection was that we didn't have the depth and breadth of knowledge of Ethiopian culture as we did for China. And that the member didn't think we fully understood the difficulties of raising a black child in a white family/village and that we thought that having trinkets around the house was sufficient. Obviously we didn't get our views across sufficiently! We definitely don't feel that 'trinkets' alone will help our future little one feel like she belongs in our family/village. We KNOW that it is going to be a LOT of hard work to make sure our future daughter has connections to both Ethiopia and to Black British culture and we aren't complacent about that. It scares us how much of a responsibility we are taking on (and have already taken on with the adoption of Little Prince) and we will strive to live up to those responsibilities.

Historical Day

Today is a historical day for the United States of America and also for the world. I went to bed last night wondering if we would wake up to a new direction in America or more of the same old same old? And was thrilled to find out that Barack Obama has become the first black President Elect in American history. Wow! What a positive message to minority ethnicities the world over :-) According to exit polls on the BBC news website, President Elect Obama won over the under 30s voters and first time voters in unprecedented numbers. His campaign has enthused so many people who hadn't felt that way about politics before. I hope President Elect Obama can live up to the enormous challenges he now faces, the American people have put their faith in him to sort out the current financial crisis (it was overwhelmingly the most important issue according to the exit polls). I also hope that the pressure of being daughters of the President of the United States of America doesn't unduly affect Malia and Natasha and that they enjoy their new puppy :-)

Look what I've found :-)

We are getting Little Prince a HUGE wooden fort for Christmas, its very sturdy and will (hopefully!!) stand up to years of rough play with him and his friends. The Knights that come with the fort aren't as sturdy though, and I've been wracking my brains to think of something that will withstand Little Prince's style of play! Then I had a flash of inspiration (thank you TV ads lol) and we are going to get him Playmobil Knights :-) However when I've been looking at the different sets that are in the shops, all the Knights are white and I definitely don't like that! So I've searched around and found that Playmobil actually make three minority ethnicity families (black, mixed race and Chinese) and I've ordered him the black and mixed race ones :-) I know its only a small thing, but living where we do (rural, very white village) we have to do all that we can to make sure Little Prince and Ethiopia MeiMei (one day) see themselves reflected in their toys.

I also found a set of Arabic troops and a set of Crusader troops, which for now he can just play with and as he grows we can use to begin to explain the historical reasons behind Muslim/Christian conflicts. Yet another big concept for a such a little boy.

Mad Cat Lady Strikes!!

I've mentioned my best friend the Mad Cat Lady, well this is her latest madness!!! Poor kitty cat!!! But kitty does make a very evil looking witch!!