In part three, Tom and I were recommended for adoption by the panel and, sure enough a couple of weeks later a formal letter arrived from...

Above: Our nephews from Nordhorn in Germany who helped us with our assessment 💙 Find part one by clicking here The grand assessment Toward the end of the final day of the Preparation Group at the adoption agency we were assigned to a social worker. Our social worker was called Michelle; another very organised looking young lady, short and smiley with a sassy red and black tight-curly hairstyle. Michelle weaved her way through the other couples in our direction and met us wit

To celebrate the launch of our brand new Daddy and Dad website, our youngest son Richard (age 7½) has written a beautiful abridged account of our family's introductions and produced a fantastic illustration. Please leave lovely comments of encouragement - We'll share your comments with him! Enjoy x The day I met my family Once upon a time me and my brother were waiting with our foster parents then one glorious day I was sitting in the toy room playing with my toys and then su

I started producing the Daddy & Dad blog shortly after Lyall and Rich ‘moved in’ back in 2014, after our adoption process had reached its happy conclusion. The arrival of the boys turned our lives upside down and as time went on life gradually returned to a wobbly upright position again. As you know the Daddy & Dad blog talks candidly about our family’s milestones, achievements and debacles (for lack of a better word) during the wobbly time of our lives after the boys moved i

National Adoption Week 2017 (October 16th-22nd) focused on adopting siblings. There are thousands of adorable little sibling groups waiting for their forever parents to come along, yet siblings are far more difficult place with adoptive families than individual children. Back when we were negotiating the adoption assessment process, Tom and I made a conscious decision to adopt siblings and in particular sibling brothers. Looking back over our experiences as parents so far, ad

This isn’t strictly a new blog post (slapped wrist) but rather an article that I put together recently for LGBT family network New Family Social, to enlighten potential new adopters leading up to LGBT Adoption and Fostering week in March. Tom and I became parents to our handsome boys, Richard, now 6 and Lyall, 7 in March 2014. We adopted our boys through a charity called Adoption Focus. Adoption Focus were very well organised and professional, acting as our guide and spokespe

Question (Beyoncé fans of a certain age raise their hand): Is it okay or not to leave the children in the car at the petrol station while you pay for fuel? Who knows. I mean, surely parents with babies don’t bother to get all their baby’s paraphernalia out of the boot and strap them in to carry them the short ten metres over to the kiosk? Incidentally one of life’s joyous little moments occurred yesterday afternoon, at Sainsbury’s petrol station on the way home from school. S

(Warning – there is some awful bad language in this blog update, if you’re of an easily offended persuasion, skip the first bit) Here I am again, coming to you from my familiar plastic garden chair at Play Hard soft-play centre. As usual, I’m sat strategically towards the back of the room, tablet computer in one hand, rather nice coffee (in an actual ceramic mug) in the other. Richard and Lyall are performing front somersaults dangerously fast on the bouncy castle, their litt

It’s far too late at night for me to be awake, but here I am, in our beautifully clean and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle free kitchen (I’ve had a late night spontaneous cleaning moment), enjoying the piece and quiet. Lyall and Richard, for the first time since they joined us back in March have gone to stay with Grandma and Grandpa at their lovely house in Warwickshire for the weekend. A whole weekend at home on our own. Wonderful. Following the fabulous news about the adoption

Heavens. (Oo I sound just like Grannie Jean. Hi Jean *waves). It’s already April 2015 and officially twelve months into our adoption placement with Lyall and Richard. Someone’s proverbially sat their big clumsy bottom down on life’s remote control and we’ve sped through a year of parenthood on fast forward. It’s gone really bloody quickly. Everything’s fine, thank you, albeit a little turbulent now that the boys are officially into the ‘testing the boundaries’ phase, which in

Arriving half an hour early, we parked the car in a lay-by just around the corner from Lyall and Richard’s foster home. It was a sunny Spring morning and a charming suburb of the city; large bay-fronted houses with pretty front gardens and long driveways lined with daffodils. We’d been to the foster home many times before so we knew their house and foster parents well; a warm, affectionate couple – they’d provided the boys’ first real loving home. But until now, we hadn’t met

If you’re considering adoption, particularly adoption of school-age children, one thing to apply some serious thought to (over a huge glass of wine and a slab of expensive cheese – enjoy the finer things while you still have peace and quiet) is what your expectations of school are for your future children. Education is touched on during preparation and training, but takes a seat right at the back, with attachment techniques and childhood development grabbing the front seats,

This is our new family – from left to right in this marvellous illustration; Lyall, Daddy, Dad and Richard. I’m Daddy, although unlike our family portrait down there, I no longer sport a head of beautiful blonde hair. Richard’s pictures of me always feature an elaborate yellow hair do. Lyall’s 5, Richard’s 4. As you’d hope, on the way to adoption, a budding soon-to-be parent is vigorously prepared, trained and then probed until every closet’s skeleton has proverbially popped