September at Adoption: The Bear Facts

I am very pleased to say that, unusually for us, September has been a quiet and fairly calm month. The children are back at school, I have finished work and the nights are drawing in. There’s a chill in the air, the conkers are ripe and autumn is beckoning. I LOVE this time of year. I love the switch from summer brights to olive green, burgundy and mustards. I love boots and cosy cardigans. I love weekends in the woods crunching in the leaves then warming up with a hot drink. I love Saturday nights in with Strictly and X Factor. I love mid-week TV, thank you Cold Feet. I love the promise of what is to come, the burgeoning excitement of Christmas. And as always I love my Bears. Here are all the best bits of the past month:

What we’ve been up to:

The boys have settled back into school brilliantly (see School section below). I was a bit concerned that once they were both at school, we might struggle to give Little Bear enough 1:1 time. However, this term Big Bear has found several after school clubs he wants to join. I have signed him up as he’s never shown that much interest before and I think it will be good for him to try some different things. It means that 3 times per week Little Bear gets me to himself for an hour. Everybody seems to be coping pretty well with the new arrangements so far and I’m just about keeping on top of who needs what when – clean uniform, football kit on Wednesdays, a pound on Thursdays for a bacon butty, show and tell stuff, golden time stuff etc. Again, I have no idea how people cope with more than 2 children!

At the weekends the boys are continuing with their Saturday morning swimming lessons. They are both enjoying it and doing well. I’m not sure Little Bear knows any technique but he seems to like spending a lot of time under the water and manages to propel himself along somehow.

The rest of Saturday usually involves chilling out as both Bears are shattered from school and maybe a trip to the park later on. On Sundays we have been going to our local country park for a bike ride. Big Bear has been *able* to ride his bike for a while now but has not actually been riding it as he lacked confidence and was pretty paranoid about falling off. We kept saying we must get him on it but due to general busyness we hadn’t. A couple of weekends ago, out of the blue, Big Bear announced that he was going to ride his bike that day. We seized the moment and trooped off.

We spent a lovely morning in the park. Big Bear tried really hard and although he needed help to get going, he was soon riding around in a fairly straight line! The fact that he was now riding his “big bike” meant that Little Bear could ride the smaller bike. It is a Police bike with a siren and a storage container on the back which is clearly the stuff of dreams for small boys. Little Bear is a pro on his balance bike so we had never really anticipated him needing the stabiliser stage but he loves it so we have let him get on with it. They were both very happy and we got to walk around behind them, enjoying the early autumn colours and having a modicum of adult conversation.

Last weekend some friends and Grizzly’s Mum joined us for the cycling trip and we all went out for a spontaneous pub lunch afterwards. The pub has a garden and play area so we sat outside afterwards and the 3 children played without incident. In the end we only moved because it started raining. It was lovely.

The rest of the time the boys are at school and as I have now finished working, I am left to my own devices.

Although leaving work is definitely the right decision for me, it was sad to say goodbye to my colleagues and the buildings I have considered my work home for the past 13 years. I will still see everyone though and they have promised to keep me in the loop about any meals out etc. In fact I’m popping back in for lunch next week.

At home I’m still getting used to being off. It’s hard to slow down and acclimatise to the break being indefinite and not time limited like an adoption or maternity leave. I have a very long list of all the things I want to get done now that I can. I seem to be attacking the list with some vigour and relishing getting things done. People I chat to seem to think I’m probably sitting about reading all day and though I find this slightly irking I think they probably have a point. There is certainly a balance to be found between tackling “the list” and having some relaxation. Nevertheless, it is quite sad how much pleasure I’m getting from jobs such as clearing out my spice cupboard (nobody needs things that went out of date in 2005!), tidying the top of the wardrobe or organising all the photos! I’m having a true spring clean (in autumn) and I think the people in the charity shop pretty much know me by name now.

I feel that once my home is in order, I can move on to other things that are a little more career focussed. I did meet with our VAA yesterday and have agreed to run some more Communication Workshops for them later in the year and next year which is great and a start to moving things on career-wise. Hopefully watch this space for further updates…

It has not been all work and no play though. It is a fairly unique situation to be in – 5 free days between the hours of 9 and 3, so I do feel the need to celebrate it. There have been quite a few shopping trips (all those new season clothes and colours…) and I have been catching up with friends. I have a couple of friends off on Mat leave so it’s nice to spend time with them.

I spent a lovely day out with Grizzly’s Gran. She has just had her 86^th birthday and it has become a bit of a tradition that we give her M and S vouchers then Grizzly’s Mum and I take her to the big M and S for a spree. She absolutely loves it and we always have a laugh. This time, she had to admit that the walking was a bit much and we borrowed a wheelchair. It’s the first time she has allowed it, having always been too proud. However, it made the trip much easier for her and by the end she was practically doing stunts! I’m glad that she saw the possibilities wheelchair use could afford her (more trips out, not more time stuck at home) and that she faced it with her usual good spirit and humour.

This month we have also had our First Experience of Letterbox.

School:

You can read about Little Bear starting school here: Little Bear Starts School.

He continues to be settled though we are having a lot of wetting incidents. Although I am not pleased about the constant washing of school uniform, I am happy that this is the only ‘issue’ we are experiencing at the moment. I can deal with wetting if behaviour and everything else is good.

Little Bear is making friends, which is lovely to see and hear about. Interestingly he has gravitated towards the other 3 adopted children in his class. He seems to play with 2 of them as a trio and separately with the 4^th boy. It is such a positive thing for him to have specific friends whom he talks about at home and who he is able to play constructively with. A year ago, when he started pre-school, Little Bear played alone. I think this was mainly out of choice, because he didn’t trust others and probably thought it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Maybe he thought he would leave them soon. It took a long time for him to even learn anybody’s name. I’m so pleased that he is now forming relationships, playing with others and being kind to them.

A side effect of Little Bear be-friending his fellow adoptees is that I have met 2 new sets of adopters (I knew one of the families already). It’s strangely comforting to know that there are parents nearby and in the same class who get it. And who might experience similar issues to us.

Little Bear has started bringing a book home now and learning his phonics. The book only has pictures and he is supposed to talk about what is happening in them. So far, he’s finding it pretty hard due to his language skills. Sometimes he just manages one word. As always, I am trying to see it as a language-learning opportunity and am doing a lot of sentence modelling for him.

Big Bear is happily settled into Year 3 and so far we are not experiencing the anxiety issues that we did last year… I’m keeping everything crossed.

Big Bear’s Mini Projects

We are still doing them whenever we can though we don’t manage one every evening now that we are back in the school routine. We are still in quite a major Hama bead phase and Big Bear has been making flags with them. Today we got creative with pipe cleaners and made this wacky bouquet:

Snapshots:

• At tea time on the first day of school I asked Big Bear if he had seen Little Bear at school. He said “yeah, I saw you in the dinner hall, didn’t I mate? We had a big hug. You were eating your dinner really well weren’t you mate?”
• Seeing Little Bear try really hard at swimming and get moved up to the next group
• Seeing Big Bear master confident bike riding
• Little Bear seeing his friend at football pick-up and offering him a turn on his bike without any prompting

Project home improvements:

Our planning permission has been granted which is great. We are now getting quotes from builders etc. and choosing everything. I am particularly obsessed with choosing the right front door. I’ve never had a new front door before and it is a lot more complicated than you might think!! Hopefully more news soon…

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Little Bear Starts School

Over the past few months we have been a little trepidatious about Little Bear entering full-time education. I think my biggest concern was over his behaviour. It’s pretty much a given that you have to do what you’re told at school. You can’t really growl at your teacher or tell her to “shut up” if you don’t like the sound of what she’s telling you. You definitely can’t scratch, bite or hit her. Or anyone else for that matter. It’s better if you don’t scream the place down. You shouldn’t try to climb over the fence to get out. All of this could be, well, challenging for Little Bear.

Secondly I was worried about how he would cope academically. The combination of plenty of early neglect and significant speech and language delay has led to him being significantly behind typical expectations for his age. I didn’t want him to be out of his depth at school. I didn’t want him to feel as though the teacher was speaking a foreign language or that nothing around him was making sense.

However, at the same time, Little Bear was showing us he WAS ready for school. Throughout the past year of dropping Big Bear off every day Little Bear has been asking if he can go too. His transition went really well and he was pretty angry with the summer holidays for impeding him from getting to where he wanted to go: school. He was very excited about shopping for his school shoes and about the arrival of his school uniform.

When Big Bear started school I knew they would be prising him from my leg for weeks to come. He’s the youngest in his class and although I didn’t have academic concerns about him, he wasn’t emotionally ready for school. It felt like a huge wrench to me that my first born (and at the time, only) child was leaving me and I was very weepy for the first few days. Then I discovered my freedom and realised there is definitely a positive in having your child in school!

When it came to it this time, my earlier concerns were mainly on the backburner and taking Little Bear to school for the first time was a happy and positive experience. He was super excited and went in confidently from day one. I do think these milestones are easier for children with older siblings as they have a much better idea of what it’s all about and they know what to expect.

I did feel the need to check in with his teacher at the end of the day but she said he had had “a brilliant first day” and there had been no behaviour incidents.

So far so good.

The Bears’ school doesn’t have a staggered start – it is full days right from the beginning. I figured that towards the end of the week, as Little Bear got tired, more behaviours would appear. But they didn’t.

We are now over 2 weeks in and his teacher recently described his behaviour as “impeccable”. I am genuinely astonished by this as his behaviour at pre-school would never have been described that way, nor his behaviour at home.

However, I have to say that his behaviour at home has settled too. Obviously we have had our moments – not least weeing on everything in sight on Saturday, including the swimming pool changing room floor and up the wall in McDonalds’ toilet! We have had countless wet pants and weekend mealtimes were characterised by hysteria and hyperactivity.

Despite that, Little Bear’s compliance has been good and we have not seen a regression in any of his skills (apart from the wetting) like we did at the start of the summer holidays.

We have tried to make things easier for him as starting school is a huge step. The dummy is having greater use as he can’t really relax properly without it yet and Little Bear is often found lying on the sofa with it after school. I have relaxed the “try to feed yourself” rule as he’s visibly too exhausted and I’d rather he gets a good meal into him. His appetite seems to have improved considerably and so does the speed of his chewing (which has always been painfully slow) but I have absolutely no idea why that should be.

The teachers have taken on board that Little Bear needs truckloads of praise and that the green/red card behaviour system won’t work for him. Consequently he is trying his very hardest to please them and is succeeding every day. I’m sure this is in turn a welcome boost to his self-confidence.

I’m so very proud of how hard he is trying and how significantly he is confounding expectations (mine and everyone else’s).

Earlier in the week I attended a parent’s talk about literacy and numeracy in Reception class and momentarily felt the stuffing knocked out of me. He has done so brilliantly that I happily trotted to the meeting not really thinking about its content.

As I sat on the unyielding plastic chair in Little Bear’s classroom, my eyes naturally scanned the vista. Beside the teacher was a wall display consisting of a photo of each child in the class and their hand drawn self-portrait. I quickly sought out Little Bears’. Aw, cute, I thought. Two very long legs not actually attached to anything, a dot then a scribble that was probably intended as a head. Then I scanned the rest. They may as well have been produced by Van Gogh the difference was so stark. Surely someone else’s would be at a similar level to his? No.. Seemingly not. Well, never mind, he’ll be better at other things I consoled myself.

The talk began and the National Curriculum expectations for Reception were laid out: “in stage 2 your child will learn 6 sounds, in stage 3, 25 more… They will come home telling you about graphemes and phonemes and what a split digraph is… They will be able to identify the first sound in words and blend sounds together…Counting is easy, all children start school being able to do that. It is understanding quantity that’s more difficult… Great games to help them at home are Snap and Snakes and Ladders… Your children will need to count forwards, backwards, count on and do number bonds to 20… We know you all do lots with them and have been doing for the past 4 years…”

It went on. I felt a grey mist descend on me and knot tighten in my stomach. I felt tears threaten to fill my eyes. Shit. Little Bear is so far behind. He has SO much to try to do this year. The task feels colossal and fairly impossible. We haven’t had him for 4 years I want to shout – nobody helped him for the first 3. We’ve only had him a year and it is not enough. It isn’t fair to expect this of him. Counting is evidently not as easy as you think it is, unless it goes “1, 4, 18” as Little Bear thinks it does. We can’t play those games you are suggesting: Little Bear couldn’t concentrate on them, understand the rules or follow any of the number bits. I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to come home telling me about split digraphs as he’d have a devil of a time getting those words through his speech processing system let alone trying to say them. Shit.

I shouldn’t really have reacted like that (as Grizzly helpfully pointed out when I got home) because it is not so long ago that Big Bear was in Reception so I clearly did know the expectations. I also quite clearly know that Little Bear is delayed in his development and that he is bound to be behind his peers who’ve had better starts in life. I think it’s just that I have re-set to Little Bear Scales and against those he is flying. Hearing the Actual Scales brought me back down to earth with a nasty bump. Also, knowing something and hearing it from someone else is quite different e.g. I know I have a prominent nose but I don’t want anyone else to tell me that!

I swallowed back the tears and tried to be a grownup about it. I went to have a chat with his teacher. It was a good chat because she was honest. She acknowledged that he does have a lot of ground to make up and that he isn’t at the same level as his peers. She was also positive and reassuring. She said we would go at his pace. We would give him more time to settle then consider what support he might need that could be funded through his Pupil Premium money. She can see the intelligent boy trapped by his speech and language difficulties that I can see and I know she will do everything she can to help him. I can tell she is already very fond of him. She can see the progress he has made since she visited him in pre-school. She can see progress in his play skills, in his ability to now play collaboratively with others instead of alongside them and in his ability to listen and to follow instructions. This is huge progress in a short time by anyone’s standards.

She told me that on the baseline assessments they have been carrying out that most of her ticks are in the 40 to 60 month range. Now, that nearly brought the tears back as on Little Bear’s last assessment at pre-school, in July, he had just gone into the 30 to 50 month bracket. His teacher is just as surprised by the speed of his progress as I am but she said she double and triple checked her assessment to ensure she wasn’t over-estimating his abilities and she is confident it’s right.

Almost exactly 1 year ago when Little Bear started pre-school, he was assessed as emerging at the 16 to 26 month level across all his skills. I don’t think anybody would expect a child to progress from a 16 month level to a 40 month level in one year. It makes me cross because clearly Little Bear was always able to achieve, he was just never taught or nurtured. We haven’t done anything magic, we have just parented him.

The chat also restored my calm and allowed me to hope once again. Realistically I don’t expect Little Bear to meet National Curriculum expectations at the end of Reception. The ask is nigh-on impossible. However, I’m sure he will continue to progress and astound us with what he CAN do. Who cares about Actual Scales? I’m going back to Little Bear Scales. He’s doing better than fabulously on those and I’m super proud of my little dude.

So far our communication with school has been good and I feel as though they “get him” and know how to manage him. I can’t ask for more at this stage.

Though I do wonder what a split digraph is…

 

 

 

First Experience of Letterbox

I can remember, ages ago, sitting in a review meeting agreeing we would send our Letterbox letter in September each year. I can also remember asking if we would be reminded and someone half laughing at me and telling me quite clearly that remembering was my responsibility. Henceforth “September” and “Letterbox” have been etched on my mental blackboard.

As the summer holidays drew to a close I was conscious that September was fast approaching and began mentally writing said letter. In doing so I realised I had absolutely no idea how to go about sending my letter. Was there a specific format I should follow? Were there any rules on envelopes or labelling? Where did I actually send it to?

I duly e-mailed Little Bear’s Social Worker to find out.

As with all correspondence in that direction, a reply took a while to materialise. Reading between the lines no formal Letterbox arrangement has actually been set up, despite us and Little Bear’s birth parents agreeing to one. I’m not too sure what would have happened if I hadn’t chased it… Nothing?

Anyhow, we have an interim plan for this year until the case is formally allocated to a worker at some unknown point in the future.

I can also remember, some months ago, agreeing that we would be willing to receive birthday cards and the like from birth parents and siblings and that instead of them sitting in the social work case file, we would use our discretion over whether to share them with Little Bear now or keep them safe for the future ourselves. Nothing materialised so I assumed nothing had been sent.

However, my recent e-mail regarding Letterbox has evidently nudged somebody into action and the cards that were sent have now been “found”.

Little Bear’s Social Worker said she would forward them to us along with a card from one of his siblings. She reported that his Social Worker has been doing some Life Story work with him as he is finding it difficult to get his head around Little Bear being adopted. She felt it would help if he could send his card to Little Bear and we could acknowledge its safe receipt in our Letterbox contact.

I really feel for Little Bear’s siblings – it must be so strange for them that their plan is long term foster care and that just one of their siblings has been adopted. I wonder how that makes them feel. Of course we could accept the card if that would help.

The Social Worker also asked us if we would receive cards from some other more distant relatives. We drew the line at that because we had never agreed to Letterbox with anyone other than birth parents and siblings and we had no idea who these people were. We felt she probably shouldn’t have accepted these cards in the first place.

At the weekend the package arrived. As much as I know that contact with Little Bear’s birth family is important and that it will benefit him in the future and that we are lucky they are engaging with it, I have to be honest and say that I find it unsettling. I think it’s because seeing their writing and the cards they have chosen (and touching something that they too have touched) is a very tangible reminder that they DO exist.

Obviously they do exist. I knew there would be “other” parents in the mix when I signed up to adoption. I knew there was likely to be some level of contact with them. I agreed/agree that there should be. It’s just, for adoption to really work, you need to start seeing this new addition as yours: your own child. And I do. Little Bear feels very much like he’s mine. When a child is yours and you love them and plan to be their parent forever, you don’t then really want to think about them being somebody else’s. That is the paradox for me. When that letter drops onto the mat you are immediately reminded that your child was not always yours and it is disquieting.

I have never been more suspicious of an envelope. It lay on the worktop, unopened, taunting me for the best part of a day before I could extricate myself from the boys long enough to open it in private.

The cards had been carefully chosen, with wording hinting at seeing Little Bear again. They were signed “mummy and daddy” which did nothing to assuage my unsettled feelings. My instinct was that it was an inappropriate way to sign the cards, given the circumstances, although I could understand why they had. I handed them to Grizzly later without saying anything and he separately drew the same conclusion. In his short lifetime, Little Bear has had 3 mummies and 3 daddies. That is extremely confusing and gives him a very skewed idea of what a mummy or daddy is.

We have put the cards safely away and have contacted the Social Worker again to ask that birth parents refer to themselves as such or by their first names. That is how they are referred to in the Life Story book. I’m sure they won’t like it and I’m sorry for that but my priority has to be Little Bear. His life has been confusing enough already.

We decided to give the card from his sibling to Little Bear. This was not a straightforward decision for several reasons. Firstly, Little Bear doesn’t yet realise that he has a birth family. Full stop. He had contact with them until shortly before we began introductions but I’m not sure that anybody explained who they were and when I’ve shown him the Life Story book he doesn’t show any recognition of them. Secondly, I feel it’s too soon to announce “this came from your brother” (one of the ones you don’t know about yet) because Little Bear hasn’t got the language ability to understand the complex explanation I would have to give or to ask the multitude of questions he would surely have. However, we knew there would be a danger in not starting this type of work yet and I did want to honour the wishes of his sibling. In the end we concluded that we would give it him and say it came from X (the name of his brother) then show him who that was in the Life Story book. Hopefully this would begin to make his sibling’s names familiar and would lay the groundwork for future conversations.

In order for this plan to work, I would need Big Bear to know about it otherwise he would blurt out something different and we’d be in a pickle. Therein lay another difficult conversation.

Big Bear didn’t originally know that Little Bear had any siblings. After a while it started to feel like a Thing: a secret Thing that shouldn’t actually be a secret so we told him. Big Bear was pretty nonplussed about it and said very little. It was quite an unusual response from him as he’s very chatty and enquiring. Perhaps he would reflect on it and ask more questions later we though. But he didn’t. I knew he wouldn’t have forgotten though as he never forgets anything.

When the package arrived I explained to him as casually as possible what was in it and how we were planning to handle it. His reaction was, again, minimal. This time though I could tell it was because talking about Little Bear’s siblings was making him feel uncomfortable. He confessed to Grizzly that it “made him feel weird”. He couldn’t find a way to verbalise it further but I think I get it.

We have all put so much effort into developing a good relationship between our 2 bears. Big Bear has had to really put himself out there and allow himself to accept having a sibling and then learn to trust him. That trust has built and strengthened and cemented their brotherly bond. Big Bear has allowed himself to love his brother and is very proud of him. Big Bear feels that Little Bear is HIS brother. Like me he has that sense of ownership. It is very hard for him to hear that Little Bear is anyone else’s brother. I suspect that receiving the post from the siblings put Big Bear on the back foot, making his position as Big Brother feel usurped.

This adoption business is complicated.

Anyhow, after considering all angles and having had all our difficult chats, we gave the card to Little Bear. He was very pleased to get his own post, especially as it was covered in stickers. He showed zero recognition when I said who it was from and thought I meant a boy from his school. I showed him the Life Story book and he went back to watching TV.

On this occasion I think Little Bear has been the least affected by the contact with his birth family. I’m sure at some point, in the not too distant future, that will change.

I have left the card up on the shelf in case he wants to ask anything or look at it again but he has paid it zero attention.

What remains is for me to actually write our Letterbox contributions. I have begun and I’ve found it pretty challenging. I can’t help but try to put myself in his siblings and birth parent’s shoes. It is difficult to fully get inside their heads though as I can’t imagine my children going to live somewhere else or being in circumstances where I would allow that to happen. I think I would want a positive (but not braggy) letter about my child being happy, healthy and enjoying themselves. I think I’d want to know they were progressing but might find too much talk of their delays accusatory.

I probably need to stop overthinking it and just write it. Grizzly will ruthlessly edit it and then I can wait with baited breath for the next emotionally loaded envelope to arrive…

Big Bear’s Mini Projects

When we considered adoption, one of our main priorities was making sure that Big Bear was going to be ok with the whole thing. He had been on his own for 6 years, getting our undivided attention. We knew that getting a brother or sister was going to be a HUGE change for him and as such we would need to ensure that he still felt secure and loved. From the onset we planned to have Special Time with him each day, as well as various other tweaks. We hoped that as he was getting a younger sibling, we would be able to stagger bedtimes and Big Bear would get some quality time once the new arrival was asleep. Luckily this did pan out as planned and Little Bear is frequently asleep before 7pm, sometimes at 6:30pm.

If Grizzly is at work, I settle Little Bear then come down and have Special Time with Big Bear.

Towards the end of last term I began to realise that all we ever did in Special Time was snuggle up on the sofa and watch TV. Whilst this is lovely and something we definitely should do sometimes, I began to think we were slightly missing the point of Special Time. We weren’t chatting and we certainly weren’t doing anything constructive. Somehow, out of that thought, the idea of Big Bear’s Mini Projects was born. Why not try making something or doing a small task together in Special Time instead? Always keen to get Big Bear off his I Pad and doing something more “wholesome” I was getting quite excited about this. I was also keen to use the hundreds of kits, pens, craft items etc. that we had accumulated over time and that neither bear ever chooses to get out when they have the chance (too busy being boisterous).

I floated the idea with Big Bear and he seemed keen. We agreed to do a mini project each night of the summer holidays. I tweeted about it and @NowWeAreSix suggested I do a picture blog about it at the end of the summer. So here we are:

Arts & crafty bits

We have used Blo Pens, stencils, colour changing pens, Spirograph, scratch foil, sequins, mosaics and good old colouring in. We have also discovered Hama beads which we hadn’t tried before (although ours were actually a Matalan version) and found them pretty addictive.

         

   

   

   

Lego

Big Bear had his 7^th birthday at the start of the holidays and was given a very large Star Wars set. We broke it down into about 6 or 7 mini projects so it kept us busy for about a week in the end! We have also built some of our own designs and Big Bear has got quite into creating flags.

  

  

Kits

We have built cars, a mobile solar system, pom-pom animals, pipe cleaner animals, a wooden aeroplane and tried Origami. It’s hard! We managed some light sabres but need to brave something more complex.

  

  

  

Miscellaneous

Big Bear helped Grizzly to spray paint his model car and we played the game Minotaurus.

 

 

I’ve had a lovely time doing Big Bear’s Mini Projects and it has definitely felt like a more productive use of Special Time. The fact that we can chat while we’re making/ doing/ creating is a big plus. I think Big Bear likes it too because now he’s back at school he’s still asking to do a project some nights. He’s tired so the TV is creeping back in again but even if we save mini projects for the weekend and holidays it will certainly be better than not doing them at all.

Do you have any suggestions for us?

 

August at Adoption: The Bear Facts

Another crazy, busy and fun filled month has passed. Its round-up time!

Events:

The first week of August was a combination of us being at home and me returning to work after my Adoption Leave (see Goodbye Adoption Leave for my musings on how the year went). I eased myself in gently with only two days of work before disappearing again on annual leave for our holidays.

During that first week we had a couple of really good days out. One was to a family fun day at a local park where the boys had a donkey ride and tried archery and Grizzly had a go on a Segway. The second was to an adventure park that is actually very close to where we live but for some reason we have never tried it before. It has go-karts, more archery, hay bales to climb on, a huge inflatable pillow to bounce on, tractor trailer rides, massive zip wires and loads more. We spent a very enjoyable day there and two boisterous boys got plenty of sensory stimulation and burned a good quantity of energy.

Grizzly ended up being off work the day before we went on holiday which meant he could entertain the boys whilst I did the packing. I usually find that part of the process pretty stressful and am usually exhausted by the time we fall into the car the next day. However the fact that we were both around meant everything went a lot more smoothly. The holidays themselves were generally a success too. You can read about them here: The Bears go on holiday.

On the way back from our week at the seaside we stopped in to see our friends for a night. We have stayed there before so we knew Little Bear would be fine with it. The 5 children had a brilliant time together as they always do. I got a little carried away chatting with one of my friends (who going forwards I am going to refer to as Aunty Giraffe as she is a big part of the boy’s lives and it seems weird not to refer to her more specifically) and stayed up way past my bedtime, then ended up having a mini party in the bathroom at 2am as Little Bear had woken for the toilet and my mum-in-law was awake worrying that she had broken the blind cord!

As soon as we were back at home again, our attentions turned to our upcoming Adoption Celebrations which took place later that week. The weather caused us a bit of stress but both our court celebration and the party we held 2 days later went brilliantly. I have very happy memories of both events and will definitely be getting some photos printed soon. The Bears loved it and Little Bear coped surprisingly well with having a house full of people. We had the bouncy castle all weekend which made them very happy and in fact they were still bouncing on it when the guy came to pick it up again.

Four days later Aunty Giraffe came to visit. The boys were very excited about this as she hadn’t been able to make the party and they both love it when she stays. Always one to think of everything she had adopted an animal each for them as an adoption celebration present. Big Bear had a gorilla and Little Bear a Lion, their respective favourite animals. I’m not sure that Little Bear really understands the concept of it because it isn’t the same as his adoption: he won’t ever meet the lion. However, he has the cuddly toy lion which is tangible and which has come to live with him and of whom he is now very fond.

Aunty Giraffe stayed for 4 nights. On Thursday she had a day out with Grizzly and the boys while I went to work (groan) then on the Friday we did a bit of baking and took the boys for a walk and a picnic in the park.

On Saturday one of our University friends was getting married so we left the boys with my parents and had a grown up day at the wedding. Thankfully the Bears were on their best behaviour and my parents did not look exhausted or dishevelled when we returned (big bonus: they might babysit again!).

It was nice to see how well Little Bear got on with Aunty Giraffe as he hasn’t actually met her that many times. He was very friendly towards her and was desperate to go and find her each morning when he woke. It was also good to compare his behaviour this time with when she stayed last time back in January. Although that visit had gone ok, we had had quite a few issues with him wanting to play on her Tablet but then not give it back, which had led to several big meltdowns. He has certainly learned a lot about other people’s possessions and doing what you’re told since then.

That brings us to this week. My attentions have turned to making sure we have all the right uniform and are vaguely organised for the imminent return to school. I have tried to make the most of my days with the boys before they disappear off again. It’s a tricky balance between getting them a bit rested ready for the new term (they both seem tired) and not allowing boredom to creep in. Today turned into a fairly long and busy day but we’ve had a lovely time. I didn’t have a pre-decided plan and I’m thankful that we are now able to allow days to evolve and just see where the fancy takes us. We started off at a park (we have a few different ones that we circle between) then tried out a nearby bakers for a take-away lunch which we ate in the car. I kept the windows closed as the boys spent the whole time pointing out bald people!! Afterwards we drove to an ice-cream farm which turned out to have a maize maze at it. We had to find hidden words then if you got them all you won a free ice cream. They boys basically just ran round and round inside the maze for ages whilst I struggled after them in my flip flops trying not to lose them! At least I got some much needed exercise.

Later on our friends came to meet us and ended up coming back to our house for some tea. Their little girl is Big Bear’s age and I’m always a little bit amazed that the 3 children play so well together. The bigger 2 are very good at including the little dude. It did make for a very raucous tea time though!

Milestones:

Little Bear had his first proper play date. Regular readers might remember that when Little Bear finished Pre-school I left my phone number for the Mum of his friend. I didn’t know if that was weird behaviour or how she would feel about it and whether or not she would get in touch. I was very pleased when a couple of weeks later she sent me a text and we arranged a meet up. It wasn’t awkward and we chatted easily while the boys played (I was muchly relieved). The boys were very happy to see each other and called each other’s names and ran to one another as though they were on a film set. The only problem was that there was a constant exchange of rude words between them which was quite difficult to quell. Words were had afterwards. However, my overriding feeling was positive. I was pleased that Little Bear had been able to leave his Preschool without a complete severing of ties. Hopefully this would help him to see that attachments are worth making and you don’t have to go through life constantly leaving people you like and love behind, as he has had to so far.

This month we have celebrated the anniversaries of meeting Little Bear and of him moving in. You can read about my Reflections on Adoption One Year In here.

Last month I talked about Little Bear showing a budding interest in Lego. This has gone from strength to strength and he got a couple of sets as presents when we had the party. He now has a couple of different superhero figures and some vehicles. He absolutely loves them and I can’t believe how long he has managed to sit still and play with them. He seems to have discovered the joy of small world play and it is as though he cannot satiate his hunger for it. He pretty much wakes me up every morning with “Mum, can we go downstairs? You play with me?” and I seem to be getting bored before he does.

It is different playing with Little Bear than it was when Big Bear was the same age. Big Bear had very strict rules on his games. If we were playing Lego we couldn’t mix in a bit of Playmobil. There was no way he was up for that. He also went through a big phase of demanding “make the man talk” which used to give me performance anxiety! What should the man say? What if I didn’t want to make the man talk? The games were detailed and Big Bear had very clear ideas about should happen in them.

Little Bear is much more of a play maverick. He loves a mash up: a plastic anteater with Duplo men; Lego men in a Playmobil Police Station; dinosaurs with superheroes. It is brilliant to see him engaging with toys so positively and persevering and letting his imagination run wild. It is such a contrast to the boy who used to spend all his time flicking switches on and off and fiddling with taps.

Little Bear is also becoming more independent with his dressing and toileting which I’m pleased about with school just around the corner.

The fact that he has also started to recognise some letter shapes blows my mind.

Big Bear had a first this month too. He went to his first live football match. He went for his birthday instead of having a party. He absolutely loved it (apart from the noise: “Mum, they had noisy horns, people were horning everywhere”!) and cannot wait to go again.

This might seem like a strange thing to mention but this month the Bears had their first bath together in a year. Oddly, they did have a bath together on the first day they ever met as they had both got wet and both needed to get warm and put dry clothes on. In retrospect it was a huge error as the day ended up being a disaster and Big Bear was totally overwhelmed by Little Bear’s wild bath time antics. Since then I would have liked to bath them together for practical reasons but I haven’t insisted on it as Big Bear really didn’t want to. For quite a while he wouldn’t change in front of Little Bear and wanted the loo door firmly closed. As their relationship has developed things have changed drastically on this front – recently they were both in hysterics in the bathroom together while Big Bear was on the loo. I have no idea what was so funny (Grizzly was there too and couldn’t shed any light on the matter) but apparently privacy has gone out the window for now. I was still surprised though when Big Bear suggested they have a bath together the other day. I think it made Little Bear’s day and really shows how far they have come in their first year as brothers.

Snapshots:

• Little Bear saying “I want to live with them forever” at the court celebration
• The three bears playing a very lively and laughter-filled game of swing ball in the garden
• Playing Uno Attack with both sets of grandparents

There are no Project Home Improvement updates this month. Hopefully there will be next time.