House update, New Family Social, and childspotting

I know I’ve not been as prolific as usual with updates to this blog. Work is busy and the loft conversion is in full swing, which at this moment means we have no roof, no heating, and no hot water (but we’ve had an electric shower installed so no, we don’t stink or anything). Our bedroom is so cold (and has a structure smack in the middle of it propping the ceiling) that we’re sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room, where we can put the gas fire on. Oh, and add to it, this morning I was woken up by the dripping of a water leak from the roof. Still, we’ll have more room when it’s all done, which is the whole point. And I’m sure we’ll laugh about it when it’s all done, although at the moment living in a cold house covered in dust, sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress, and being woken up by the builders hammering on the roof is taking its toll on my sense of humour and tolerance...

Last Sunday we met S, J & C for lunch and caught up with them, and then headed over together to the New Family Social get-together. We caught up with a few people we’d met before and also met some new people, which was nice. There were some good news from a couple who are going to matching panel soon and also some shared frustrations among those waiting to be matched.

Last week we also received new issues of Children Who Wait and Be My Parent, the two main publications which feature children who are available for adoption. Be My Parent has several features this month on same-sex adoption, as well as an article on New Family Social, so it was nice to see positive features to counteract the Daily Mail articles of late (although of course the readership is quite different in type and numbers). One of the publications had details of a sibling group we could be interested in. We really shouldn’t be “childspotting” in the magazines as we’re still tied to our local authority for another two months, but we talked about it, read the details a few times, and have decided to contact Miranda anyway to see what she says.