Nice Comments

Don't you love it when other people (ie not family) make nice comments about your kids? Well I do :-) Little Prince (who can be a handful) has a private swimming lesson on Friday evenings, just him and the teacher. After his lesson the teacher was telling me how well he is coming on and what a joy to teach he is :-) She said that he is just so constantly smiley and happy that you can't help but love him :-) She also said that she'd had to tell him off for splashing her deliberately, and she was very impressed that he'd immediately stopped splashing and apologised to her. Isn't he a lovely boy :-) With all the long term implications of the recent OT and Paediatrician visits, it is so heartening to hear such lovely comments about my precious little man :-) I KNOW he's great, but I'm biased as I'm his Mummy - its lovely to hear others who don't HAVE to like him saying what a great little boy he is :-)

Where have I been lol

I've had a few emails and comments asking if we are all ok as I haven't updated my blog for a while. I just want to let everyone know that we are all fine, just busy with end of term school stuff - not too long to go and then its the Summer Hols :-) I'll try and update again this evening when Little Prince is fast asleep :-)

Its Official!

We got a letter from the DCSF this morning, letting us know that they have contacted the CCAA to tell them officially that we are withdrawing our application, and to request they return our dossier. Even though I am now committed to our Ethiopian adoption and our future child from Ethiopia, I am a little sad and reflective that we have now officially withdrawn from the China adoption programme. Who knew, when we started all excited and full of dreams, that it would end like this? We confidently expected that we would be home with our daughter by now, and here we are still in the process and still waiting. It seems so long ago. But if the wait for a referral from China hadn't lengthened at the astonishing rate that it has for the past few years, we wouldn't now be changing to an Ethiopian adoption. I am sure that once we have our new little one in our arms, that we will see that this is how it was supposed to be and that our new little one is the perfect addition to our family :-)

Homestudy Update COMPLETE!!!

Our SW arrived this morning, moments after Mr Messy and Little Prince got home from their Boys Day Out to Toys R Us and McDonalds! We were all in the middle of unpacking (and untwiddling all those nightmare wire fasteners) the Star Wars toys Little Prince had chosen. He got such a FABULOUS school report last week, that this was his treat from Daddy :-) Our SW waited patiently while we sorted out all the boxes and Little Prince happily chatted away to her about his trip with Daddy and his new toys. LMS then took him out to the local Indoor Play Centre, to keep him amused while me and Mr Messy talked to the SW, and Drama Teen tidied her bedroom.

We talked for the next four hours!! We went over in detail, our reasons for changing from China to Ethiopia, our reasons for choosing Ethiopia, our plans to keep our future child in touch with her original language and culture and what, if any, special needs we felt we could cope with. We also had to explain the adoption process in Ethiopia and the likely background of children needing to be placed for adoption. We were amazed at how much we got through! We also had to read through the revisions to the report following the SW's visit last Monday.

We also had to go into great detail about Little Prince's emerging difficulties. Although when shown his glowing school report, and his narrowly focussed IEP (concentrates on fine motor control) she agreed that it is nothing to get worried about and that it shouldn't present any great difficulties to us either now or when our new little one joins our family.

At the end of our visit our SW said she was going to go and type up all the information from today and contact our LA's Team Leader to say the updates are all ready. We all think the Team Leader will want to schedule a meeting between herself and our SW to discuss the report, and our SW says she will want to go over it with a fine tooth comb!! So there could be more work to do, but we won't know until SW and Team Leader have had their meeting. Once everyone is happy that the report is complete and that Panel will be happy with it, we will be assigned a Panel date. Once we have a date to work towards we can then schedule our new medicals and apply for new CRB checks. Our SW agrees that this was done (at our LA's insistance) too early last time and that we shouldn't start those until we have a firm date for Panel.

I am completely amazed and stunned, that that was it!!! Despite our LA's insistance that we have a 'whole new homestudy' our pragmatic and practical SW has done what we asked in the first place - updated our existing report!! We've just got to keep our fingers firmly crossed that the new report satisfies our LA Team Leader and that we get to Panel with a minimum of delays - which given how slowly our LA works would be a minor miracle!!

LMS has hurt her wrist

She isn't sure whether it was cooking bolognaise or pole dancing that did it!!! And no I'm not googling pictures for this post!!!!!!!!!

Paediatrician Visit

I took Little Prince to see the Paediatrician this morning. We were with him for about two to two and half hours, even the nurse said we got our money's worth lol. He took extensive birth and developmental history. He observed Little Prince as he played and we talked. He asked lots of searching questions about his behaviour and schooling. The Paediatrician wants Little Prince to have blood tests to see if there is any underlying medical/chemical reason for Little Prince's difficulties, as we have little to no medical history for his birth family. He also wants him to be checked out by a specialist Speech and Language Therapist, to check his understand and comprehension of speech, due to the fact that Little Prince can take things that are said, very literally. He wants Little Prince observed and assessed by the Educational Psychologist and for school to fill in some questionairres about his abilities and behaviour. He took a copy of the Occupational Therapist report, and said it was a very good report. He said that given Little Prince's scores for fine motor control and visual motor integration that there is no quesiton that he has dyspraxia. But that he thinks there is a lot more going on, he is considering ADHD and Aspergers. He does not like to diagnose ADHD before the age of six years, but says that Little Prince has obvious attention and concentration issues. The Aspergers comment was due to Little Prince's penchant for lining up his toys and his very literal interpretations of things that are said to him. We are seeing the Paediatrician again in November after the other tests/investigations have been done, so that he has a more complete idea of Little Prince's areas of difficulties. The Paediatrician checked that we were okay with travelling to that particular hospital as he said Little Prince would probably be under his care for a good few years to come. He mentioned the dreaded medication for ADHD, but said that he does not prescribe this unless the child is given a lot of other support, as the medication just masks the symptoms and does not help the underlying issues. This was quite reassuring as I would hate for a 'chemical cosh' to be used on my bouncy little man.

At the moment I'm quite stunned and overwhelmed by all of this. We have other things going on at the moment that make this quite a difficult time and have some hard thinking and decision making to do. Think of us...

Occupational Therapist's Report

We got the OT report on Little Prince yesterday. It made very sobering reading. My gorgeous little man is struggling so hard in some areas, that he is in the bottom couple of percent of children his age! I was so shocked. And guilty. Why hadn't we noticed earlier? How have I not seen this? I'm trying to convince myself that the fact that we haven't noticed is a testament to his intelligence and determination, but I am so sad for him. He tries so hard, really really hard, and certain tasks must be impossibly difficult for him - but he still tries. He is still a cheerful, happy, friendly and confident little lad, bless him.

We also got his school report yesterday. Which apart from "boiler plate" text in parts (Mr Messy says school use a computer programme where you tick boxes according to the child's abilities and it squirts out the corresponding text) was very good. He is excelling in his maths, he is a popular member of the class and excels at messy play!! I know - I'm the one who tries to wash his school uniform!! I should buy shares in Vanish!!!

The Occupational Therapist is on holiday for the next couple of weeks, but as soon as she returns we will be talking to her about her working with Little Prince to help him with his difficulties. Despite the difficulties the report makes clear he has, it is also very positive in that there is a LOT we can do to support and help him :-)