It's a YES!!

It was Matching Panel today.  This is where a panel of people decide whether the little one with whom we have been linked will be officially matched to us.  And she is!

We weren't nervous at all; we felt it was just a formality as all plans have already pretty much been put in place.  The panel is made up of a Chairman, medical adviser, administrator and four others including and adopter and an adoptee. I can see why some people would be very nervous though, particularly in the grand surroundings of County Hall, sitting in front of a panel of strangers who know everything there is to know about you.  We had practiced some of the answers to questions we felt might come up and gave what we felt were good answers to the others.  Two of the questions I could sense were particularly aimed at me due to my interest in all things holistic and organic but they were fine.  I think we were in there no more than 10 mins.  Our social worker, the family finding social worker, little one's social worker and another senior practitioner from the adoption team went in first for about 20 minutes to put forward our case and after we came out they spent another few minutes deliberating before the Chair came out and offered us his congratulations.  The decision was unanimous.

Full steam ahead now.

But no chance to celebrate just yet as, guess what, more bathroom stuff to organise so off we went to the local DIY stores to choose vinyl and paint.  Lovely.  Fitter is still here, tiler is here today.  Based on this and when we had our kitchen done, I'd say 60 Minute Makeover on TV is telling porkies.

Then we had another school to look round.  We were pleasantly surprised by this school but it's still not our first choice and although the Head was very frank with us about where the school is now and where she wants it to be, we still want to go ahead with the first choice. And considering it's a church school, I was surprised to hear that not many parents actually attend church. Plus this school today is twice as far as the first choice school.  The social workers are putting the case forward for our first choice school and hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the week.

I'm going to go through the introductions plan this evening and plan what we can do when our daughter comes to our house during the second week of intros.  I've bought some pens and pencils already, might investigate Play Doh and think of some very easy things we can cook.

Introductions starts in 11 days.

WE'RE GOING TO BE MUMMY AND DADDY!!