Shining light

Round 33: January 2037 (Summer)

last update/next update

Calvin and Aaron Clarke are both 34 and Amy is 2.
(Lake is 80, Kendal is 61, Josie is 35, Troy is 34, Rebecca is 28, Jude is 5, Willow is 2 and Andrew is 11 months old)

Narrated by Calvin Clarke

I didn’t think it was possible but now that we have Amy, Mum drops over even more than she did before. She used to mostly stick to the weekends but she and Lake often come by in the evenings during the week now too.

I don’t know if anyone besides Aaron or me was as excited as Mum was when Amy was finally placed with us.

Fortunately, I really don’t mind so much. Mum and I have always been close and I was expecting we’d see her around here even more once we became parents.

Amy took a little while to warm up to the extended family but she just adores everybody now.

She seems to enjoy the visits from her grandparents as much as we do.

Mum and Aaron have always really got along, so she knows she’s always welcome here.

Her relationship with Troy’s wife isn’t quite so easy but I have difficulty with Josie myself sometimes.

We normally get along quite well but we’ve had our moments over the years. I just grin and bear it if I see her when she’s in one of her moods.

She can definitely be trying at times but I like seeing Troy and my nephews, so what can I do?

Jude and Andrew are a lot of fun and they’re so much like Troy. Especially Andrew - it’s almost like I’m looking at my brother when I look at him!

The last time the family all got together was this week when we held a party in the park for Amy’s second birthday.

We’ve got a good-sized backyard but it’s still a little sparse for entertaining, so the park seemed like an excellent option for the warm weather we’ve been having. There are so many young kids in the family at the moment and they all had such a great time.

The birthday girl really enjoyed her party as well, being passed around among all her aunties, uncles and grandparents all afternoon.

Willow idolises Amy. Once Amy is doing something, it’s almost a guarantee Willow want to follow seconds later.

It’s really sweet to watch. There’s a bit of a difference in maturity levels now, as they’re 9 months apart but that will seem like nothing at all in a few years.

Aaron and I are just loving parenthood in general. Everything is so new to Amy, which almost makes it seem new to us as well.

It's harder for Aaron and I to make time to spend alone together but it's really been worth it.

I’ve been down on the floor with Amy playing peek-a-boo and singing nursery rhymes. Even when we were in the middle of adopting, I didn't picture myself doing stuff like that.

Over the last several months, I’ve found myself entertained by all sorts of things I would never have imagined I’d ever care about.

She's such a gorgeous, sweet little girl.

Most of the time anyway. One thing Amy isn't shy about is letting us know when she's not happy.

Amy can throw some truly epic tantrums if she’s not attended to right away.

And then at other times, she’s happy to entertain herself in her nursery for a while and will still be quietly playing when we come in to check on her.

We’ve enjoyed raising Amy so much that we’ve decided we want to add to our family sooner rather than later.

Aaron was the one who brought it up, just a couple of weeks ago.

He was ready for me to say I wanted to wait a little bit longer but I realised straight away that I was keen on adopting again too.

We're both thinking we'd like to adopt a baby this time, which would be totally new for us. Neither of us has much experience with infants.

We both knew we had the day off the next day, so we agreed to go down and see Rebecca again and see what she could do for us.

We had to bring Amy with us. Rebecca doesn’t have her office set up for kids but as it turned out, Amy was fascinated by the fountain in the corner anyway.

Unfortunately, Rebecca can’t help us out much at the moment. The adoption agency which placed us with Amy requires a minimum one year wait between placements.

I can see why they’d put that rule in place but it didn’t make it any less disappointing.

It wasn’t a totally wasted trip though. We were able to talk about what the process would be like the second time around, so we’ll be fully prepared for it when we can finally start.

Some parts will be less in-depth this time, seeing Rebecca already collected so much information last time which is still relevant.

But Rebecca will also need to assess how we’re doing with Amy at that point and how she’ll likely react to another child joining the family.

We can start some of the preliminary work now but we won’t be considered candidates for placement until a year has passed. It’s a bit nerve-wracking but the process will at least be a bit more familiar to us this time.

Because we'd like to adopt an infant, we could end up with a longer wait ahead of us this time. Despite that, we left Rebecca’s office feeling very positive about the whole thing.

Amy joined our family last June, so by this June, we hope to be totally ready to join the waiting list. We’re really looking forward to making her a big sister.

Extras:
Just some cute spam that didn't fit into the update!

Willow cracks me up! She makes the funniest faces!

Notes:

• Title is from Shining Light by Ash.
• Sneak preview of Andrew! You'll see him properly in the February birthdays but wow - he really does look a lot like Troy!
• Aaron rolled the "Expand Family by Adoption" ROS this round. I decided they might want an infant this time around because Aaron rolled the "Study Parenting" want, even though he doesn't actually have any infants anywhere in his family right now. So I guess he wants to change that. ;)
• I'm planning on doing the same thing I did last time to figure out when Aaron and Calvin will get their baby but I've lowered the odds. It's harder to be placed with an infant than with an older child, so I changed it from 1/4 to 1/5. I don't want it to be too impossible! I won't start rolling until June. It could mean a long wait but they could also get lucky and their number will come up right away. Can't wait to find out - I haven't done the rolls yet!