Week 22 diary

It is still hard to believe that Tim and I had a life with just the two of us before Jamie arrived on the scene. I was looking at a photo the other day we have in our bedroom of when we visited Disneyworld in 1999, and it was so odd just seeing a photo with the just two of us without that cheeky monkey face popping up between us!

Sometimes I just look at Jamie and I get this big lurch in my stomach because of how much I love this little boy of ours. It seems that he's been with us forever and has slipped so easily into our lives that we wake up every day wondering whether this will be the day it all goes pear-shaped! So far, so good!

I've now been to see my employers and we had a really good meeting. I chose a morning when Jamie was at nursery so I could concentrate on what I was doing!

I know that it's not feasible for me to return to my old job - I wouldn't want the stress and want to go part-time. They were very supportive and said that they would start to look for something suitable for me within the organisation - of course, as a back-up, I've started to scour the local job papers just in case!

It was nice to go back and see all my colleagues and have a good old chat. Mind you, I wasn't too heartbroken to say bye-bye and leave them to carry on working whilst I went home to pick up Jamie from nursery at lunchtime!

Jamie loves to continue to test our boundaries and the other day was no exception. He decided to pull the flower petals off some bulbs we'd actually planted together not long after he was placed with us. I was really upset about it and told him so. I asked him to go into the living room and quietly think about what he had done.

Big mistake! After about five minutes, I realised that he was being incredibly quiet ..... a bit too quiet. I wondered into the living room and found him lying quietly on top of our big beige footstool just inside the door. He seemed rather reluctant to get up, but when he did, I soon realised why he'd been so reluctant!

There, all over this footstool, was a drawing in brown crayon, which would have been quite at home hung on the wall in the Tate. I couldn't believe my eyes! Anyway, in a cross voice I asked him to go and sit on the stairs which he did so in floods of tears - all I have to do is to ask him to sit on the stairs and he knows I'm really cross and normally starts the waterworks!

Well, out came the good old Vanish mousse and luckily after some good old scrubbing it came out. Jamie really enjoyed telling me later "Look mummy, its all gone now see!" Not quite what I wanted to hear!

We recently had our Review meeting at our home which took all of about fifteen minutes! Jamie loved being the centre of attention and was on full "performance" mode - at one point falling on the floor and announcing "Look I'm dead", much to the amusement of everyone except us!

Jamie's social worker also had got the life story book with her which she passed on to us to look at. She went through it briefly whilst she was with us, but it wasn't until Jamie had gone to bed that I had a chance to have a really good look.

Well, I was absolutely heartbroken. There was just one photograph of him as a baby, and that was him with another family member with their hand all over his head (to be fair, his social worker explained that was the only photograph the birth mother would pass on to them). Our social worker said we could possibly broach the idea of her passing on more photographs in the letterbox contact, but we don't hold out much hope.

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