Well, for most people, the turkey has just about gone now, we are all full to the brim and just about ready to start working out what day of the week it is again! 

I went for a lovely walk with Shadow and thought it was a great time to tell you all about our festive period and what we got up too. Hope you enjoy and look forward to catching up with you again in the New Year

On our Instagram account, I put out a link to NGL and allowed all the followers to ask any questions they wanted without sharing their details. It was a really fun exercise and it turns out, you guys wanted to know more about me! :-) 

You can follow our Instagram account too: Adoption.Adventures

I have been to my first observation of another agency's prep group, it was really interesting and I got to see a lot of great work going on. But, this has also highlighted some key issues and considerations that I need to raise with the senior team and also on a wider scale too. 

Apologies in advance, I get on my soap box a few times in this episode, I shall blame the cold! 

It's time for Christmas parties and instead of Dad and I going out to enjoy the festivities, it is once again our Little Dude who is reaching for the next egg nog. But then, he wanted to push his luck just a little further and see if our Christmas spirit was in the forgiving mood, check it out and let me know if you would have done the same. 

As part of my work with Adoption UK, we have explored Post Placement Blues and how many people have experienced this. It was a really interesting piece of work and has shone a light on some really important factors. 

As you know, I speak with Little Dudes mum over email on a regular basis, recently she has sent two emails that have given us pause and made us think about how we would talk with Little Dude. He was great when we sat him down to speak, but it then raised further questions that we needed to consider. 

As our children grow older we have to decide what parts of their lives that we will be involved in and what areas we need to give them space on. Then we have to deal with all of those people around us that have an opinion, the struggle is real!! :-) 

Here are my views on the latest issues and what we have decided to do about them. 

I was really lucky to be invited to attend a training session with One Adoption West Yorkshire where I learned all about brain-based parenting, the session covered such a great deal of information and helped me to understand some of the behaviours we had seen and continue to see. I have tried to cover as many aspects of this training as I could to help you too. 

In a few conversations recently it has come up that there is a lack of Dads represented within the world of adoption and this then lead me to discuss the gaps that this makes, so it got me thinking about where I have met Dads who are sharing their experiences and wondering why there aren't more of us...

What are your thoughts? 

Drop me a line on [email protected] 

I was asked to attend a matching/profiling event and talk about my experience as a parent and how our process was adopting an older child. The whole day was great fun and I got to meet some wonderful people. Our RAA had taken a new approach to the event and I thought that it was a really smart way to launch the event. Have a listen and tell me if you agree. :-)