Well it’s been an intense few days!

The heat has left us all knackered and hot and sweaty and grumpy, struggling to sleep and overall pretty tired. I caught A’s cold so that’s not helping either.

We have been setting up letterbox contact for S, which is a managed process via social services where we can write a letter and send up to 4 photos, once a year, to her birth parents and siblings. We have no idea if they will write back or not yet… S was really keen to do this and excited to be able to make contact with her siblings again, but doing it also stirred up a lot of really big emotions for her, and it was quite an upsetting process. We ended up doing her letters on Sunday night, it was so hot that A wouldn’t go to sleep and S was really upset and missing her birth family and so it was a fairly tough night all round. No-one got much sleep and it was quite a tense night in the house!

Monday was absolutely insane!

After the girls went to school/nursery, I got a letter stating that my Adoption Order application had been rejected as I had used an old version of the form. The letter said they had enclosed a new form for me to complete but they had forgotten to actually include it! It took me 90 minutes to get through to the court on the phone last time so I decided to cycle down to the court and get it in person.

Off I went down to collect the form, and I figured I could just fill it out there and then and resubmit it straight away. Except that the new form requires additional documents to be submitted so I went to a cafe to fill it in and emailed back and forth with my social worker to check which document was needed.

Once I’d filled in the form I walked up to the library to print the extra doc out, realised I needed to make 3 copies of the forms, and I didn’t have enough cash, so popped to a cashpoint and back to the library to make copies, then headed back to the court house to redsubmit everything. What I had thought was a 20 min job took me over 2 hours to do!

Cycled home in the heat, had a late lunch then went to pick up the kids. Collected S and her friend from school at 3.20pm, swung by the nursery at 3.45pm to get A, and then headed home. We had about 45 mins at home to eat an early dinner, then S and her friend had to be delivered back to school by 5pm to get ready for the play, so A and I hung about sweating in the playground until 6pm when we went to watch the play. It was lovely but SO HOT in the school hall, and me and A were both exhausted. Finally got everyone home by 8.30pm and into bed, but what an exhausting day it was!

Tuesday I just felt wrecked all day, and the kids were knackered. I had a work meeting to attend so did a couple of hours’ work in the morning. Then in the afternoon we had an appointment for A to meet her new teacher at her new school, and then we went home to chill. A passed out exhausted at 6pm and S had the play again but thankfully another parent agreed to take her and drop her home.

By Wednesday I had lost my voice and was feeling pretty rough from my cold, and I had to drag both kids out of bed in time for school. Then I had a meeting at S’s new school to discuss the transition to secondary school with a few of her key teachers. I bought some wine and cards and chocolates to make sure we had gifts for the teachers at the end of term etc.

On Thursday I had an appointment with the child psychologist on the Attach team, and another appointment with S’s play therapist, and on Friday had a load of errands to run here and there. S had another playdate after school. Managed to fit in a swim and had another work meeting as well.

This week it’s even hotter and we have S’s leaver’s assembly and A’s stay and play at her new school, and various end of term things to attend to.

I honestly don’t know how we will fit all this stuff in once I go back to work, I’m exhausted at the moment and it feels like it has been non-stop!