Today had originally been planned as our first day out with the children - but due to our already having done that, and torrential rain throughout the day, we ended up staying at the foster carers with them from the moment they woke to the moment their heads hit the pillow.

We were up at 6:30am , and arrived in time to get the kids up, in the bath, dressed, through breakfast and into their normal day. The rain outside meant we spent the best part of 12 hours couped up in the playroom with the children. The inevitable happened - we saw our first attempts from the older ones to manipulate us, our first tantrums, and our first floods of tears. Thankfully the foster carer showed up in the nick of time to back us up in laying down the law.

Visitors - particularly grandparents - are going to think we are horrible. While we have to remember that they have been through it all with us, it is tempting to give in and sweep the children into your arms when the tears start - particularly when you have their past in the back of your mind.

All the advice we have been given - by the social workers, the foster carers, the books, and other parents - is to hold the line. Be strong. Do not bend in the face of howling tears. It’s very, very hard indeed…

We do have some experience to fall back on now though - we have seen the manipulation from start to finish with each one. We have seen the jealousy of each other, the inability to lose at games, and unwillingness to share. Many would have buckled today, and perhaps gone home in tears - exactly the opposite happened to us.

We drove home laughing about the children’s attempts to push our buttons - to bend us to their will… and by god have they some will power.

p.s. we changed our satellite television subscription tonight to include the childrens channels.

We were thrown in at the deep end today. What had been planned as a day with the foster carer turned into us taking the children out for the first time on our own - several days ahead of schedule. The change-around was caused by a call from the social services asking the foster carer to pick up a newborn baby from the nearby hospital.

After a bit of quick polling of friends with children, and hasty fitting of car seats this morning, we set off for a farm that’s open for visitors nearby. We saw rabbits, goats, cows, chickens, pigs - you name it. We climbed on hay bails, swung on swings, climbed on assault courses, and did a hundred other things. We also went to toilet about fifteen thousand times, and ended the day with a wellington boot buying trip.

I think the social services are shocked at our progress. Perhaps they forget that we are intelligent adults, and are surrounded by friends with young children who we regularly look after. The foster carer seemed to notice from the start, and has given us far more trust than is usual. Both we and the professionals expected us to make some glaring (and hilarious) mistake at some point, but it hasn’t happened so far.

The main thing I am taking from today is a realisation from both myself and Wendy that we don’t see these kids as we have our friends children. While watching their antics in the playpark this afternoon I suddenly realised I didn’t want others to think badly of them, and was quietly annoyed when other people’s children pushed them aside. The attachment between us is growing day on day - we have already become a constant in their lives, and it is showing massively in their behaviour towards us.

The foster carer is losing them, in front of all of our eyes - thankfully this is her favourite part of the process, and she has done her job wonderfully. We are greeting with beaming grins in the morning (cheers of “Yay!” today), and depart with huge hugs with hopes for the morning.

We put them to bed for the first time this evening - saying good night before coming away. For the first time we really realised how little they have in the world, and the urge to provide it has exploded within us. Lets hope we find brakes to avoid changing their wonderful characters for the worse.

Observation of day two? Probably that it’s all getting a lot easier.

This morning was filled with a visit to playgroup this morning to help the younger children say goodbye to their friends. I’m not sure they realised what was really going on, but things were made very much easier by a cheeky little lad who shouted “There’s your new Mum and Dad!” when we walked in. I think somehow our appearance had been foretold.

After taking part in several songs and a few minutes of barely controlled mayhem, we found ourselves waving lots, watching tearful helpers hug the kids a little bit too tightly, and then made our way home - holding little hands along the way.

Next hurdle was lunch - which could have been fun and games, but ended up being very easy indeed. We have so much to thank the foster carer for. Any child who likes cheese sandwiches is fantastic in my book.

The afternoon brought a visit to the older child’s school - with a visit to the headmistress, and a chance to meet their teacher, and class. It’s starting to seem very, very strange - wherever we go, whoever we meet, we may as well be walking on a red carpet, and having people sprinkling rose petals in our path. The good will, hopes, and toothy smiles we receive along our way is incredible.

After a break where we followed a very good friend’s advice to go and buy some Vic’s First Defence for ourselves, we returned to visit for the rest of the afternoon - drawing pictures, watching television, and playing the game where I am a horse and they all climb on me again. We have the best photo of it, and I wish I could share it - hopefully you will understand why I cannot.

Dinner went wonderfully. Again - we have so much to thank the foster carer for. Getting the youngest to blow on hot food was a bit of a challenge, but we got there in the end. We are starting to realise that there are no huge lessons left for us to learn - but there are innumerable small ones.

The kids have accepted us totally. They look forward to our arrival each day, and are sad when we leave. A part of that is the novelty of such intense contact - but another part is that we are perhaps the most active, consistent, immovable people they have experienced in their short lives thus far.

We are starting to accept the fact that we are not what the children have known as normal. Our friends and family are not normal either - we are all exceptional. We all come from a very different world, populated with different values, different aspirations, and very different expectations of that which we take for granted from others.

This different world may be the children’s biggest hill to climb, and we have no illusions about that.

Postscript - Wendy’s parents have been buying things again…

We survived. We have now met our children, who called us “Mummy and Daddy” straight off the bat. Very, very weird - but not the biggy.

The strangest thing, and all I have the mental capacity to write about this evening (and this happened several times) - were little voices shouting “Daddy” from somewhere, and suddenly realising that was me.

It’s going to take a while to get used to that.

It all went fantastically. We are exhausted. We opened a bottle of wine the minute we walked in the door. More news as the days progress - tomorrow is nursery, and then having dinner together.

I have spent the greater part of the day constructing stair gates for the door between the kitchen and the lounge, the base of the stairs, and the upstairs landing. Our house is slowly turning into Castle Colditz - with the intention that no childs movement between rooms will be allowed without full authorised paperwork in triplicate.

Major item of interest today - as mentioned early this morning - was a trip to Starbucks in town to meet a fellow blogger and her other half. Had a great time getting to know new people, and am slightly worried that our impending explosion into a family of ever so slightly more than two will make visiting us a somewhat brave experience should they wish to try it.

It was the first time either of us had been in a Starbucks for a long time - and certainly not in England. Nobody remarked on “how great” their coffee was, but then I am continually being chided for treating food and drink as “fuel” anyway.

After saying our goodbyes I made my way along the street to Whittard - a shop that most Americans would probably fawn over; they sell hundreds of different teas, along with all the eccentric tea pots and china tea cups and saucers you can imagine. They also sell nice coffee (as evidenced by the photo above).

Laden with coffee and the newspaper, I made my way home - arriving thirty seconds before our guests who had agreed to call in during the morning. Wendy sat in all morning for them - missing out on Starbucks and new-friendage - so they could not turn up anyway. She could have come with me. Naturally we didn’t mention it, and got on with things - as you do. We are starting to realise though that missed chances like that are going to take weeks if not months to re-schedule in the future - either that, or arrive en-masse at coffee shops in the same manner as the allied invasion of Europe.

I have now finished my chores for the day, and Wendy is busy ironing - trying to clear the six foot backlog before we find ourselves ironing hundreds of miniature clothes belonging to little people.

Following our marathon week of evenings out, and dinners with friends, we are rolling towards the end of the tracks today with perhaps the most interesting meet-up - but not before we ate so much yesterday we felt sick.

Yesterday was fun. The kind of fun you can only have with friends you kind of know are going to remain so for many, many years to come. We went out for lunch with she of “Blogapotamus” fame and her other half, The Rockstar to a place fairly local to us called “The Blacksmiths Arms” - an american themed restaurant on the outskirts of Wycombe.

We ate enough to feed a small army - and couldn’t stop because it was so good. Seriously. We made the slight mistake of saying “large” when we ordered Nacho’s to start, and almost laughed out loud when the dustbin lid sized plate emerged from the kitchen, replete with all manner of relish and dippy stuff. I’m pretty sure they shot a cow to make the burgers too.

No day out would be complete without a trip to John Lewis (huge department store, for those of you in the rest of the world), so we found ourselves buying nuclear protection for the dinner table, a new iron (after Wendy spectacularly destructed ours the night before last), and began a fruitless search for egg cups. Of course the department store had them, but they only had “designer” ones - meaning they cost as much as we might pay for an entire tea set.

We ended up back home, walking down the high street to our local “Cargo” - another (cheaper) housewares store. We found the perfect egg cups for the kids, and also four or five other things we didn’t know we needed until we saw them.

This morning I am up, have tidied the house up, had a wash and shave, let the chickens out, and am thinking about wandering into town to meet some new friends for a coffee - and as is typical of our chaotic life at the moment, one of our family is due to turn up meaning Wendy will have to stay here; therefore meaning I am meeting new friends on my own.

Good job I am good at winging it in social situations… this is the first time meeting the girl that recognised me by my scarf on the train. I’m hoping Wendy will make it into town in time to meet them because she’s a knitter too.

In other news, we have just confirmed another friend and his son coming to visit for dinner and board games this evening. Do we win an award yet for fitting the most socialising into one week ever?

I finished work this evening, and don’t go back for 2 months. During the coming weeks I have to learn how to be a Dad to several small children.

Leaving work this evening was strange - following a last hour where a seemingly endless queue of people took turns to visit my office or call me (including the MD!), I found myself stood in the kitchen at 6pm washing my coffee mugs out to take home with me.

I have never experienced so much good will from so many people. It feels very odd indeed.

The weekend is going to be spent building stair gates, putting curtain poles up, and finding ever more room in the attic for boxes of things we no longer have room for. Bedrooms, cupboards and wardrobes stand empty - ready to be populated with unknown clothes and toys.

We also need to find some way of applying brakes to Wendy’s parents - the children haven’t even arrived yet, and the stream of things they “saw and thought of us” is increasing week on week. We are having to be very careful - we only have to mention we could do with something and it arrives by magic - as evidenced by the brand new pushchair in the hallway. In weeks to come I will no doubt stop feeling as guilty about receiving presents and gladly accept them.

It’s perhaps the first lesson, isn’t it - we are not the only people excited about the children arriving in our lives - our extended family are busy gnawing their fingernails too.

p.s. Wendy brought home a tub of chocolate cornflake balls. I’ve now eaten so many of them I feel sick - and I can’t stop eating them.

The wonderful lady in the photo above is attending her last day of work today. For nearly 20 years she has been pursuing a career in accounting, and for the last few years has been burdened with perhaps the world’s biggest geek following her around like a lost puppy. Today she leaves everything she knows behind and sets out on a new path towards being a parent.

I think she is very brave, and I love her to pieces.

At the moment this blog is very candid indeed - and always has been. While this isn’t a problem for us at the moment, it does raise concerns for the near future, and talking about our various adventures in parenthood. In recent days I have been toying with the idea of closing this blog completely down, and starting again under the veil of a fictional persona - a pseudonym.

I know many people write under pen names, and keep their real name and/or location secret. I began thinking about doing the same thing (and have a second blog in the sidelines should we choose to take this path), but am wondering if it’s really worth all the hassle. It will mean new email accounts, new Flickr accounts, new YouTube accounts, and much more besides. In a strange way it’s the reverse of the line from Castaway, where Tom Hanks is told “it takes a lot of work to bring somebody back to life”… in this case it would require mountains of work to make somebody dissappear.

One of my close friends remarked yesterday that I am tremendously brave to share as much as I do on the internet. I don’t see it that way - I find it far earier to just tell the truth than weave an elaborate web of half thruths. It would seem to me that as long as we use the security that already exists at sites such as Wordpress, Flickr and YouTube, and are careful what we write, there shouldn’t really be a problem.

What would you do, if faced with a similar situation?

I wanted to clear something up - it would appear many of those who have commented seem to think that we have a few days left until our house is populated with small nuclear devices on legs. Far from it.

In a few days time we will make our way over to the foster carer’s house - after school turns out - and meet several small children for the first time. We will hang out with them for a couple of hours, play with them, tell them stories about ourselves, and generally just get used to each other a little bit. Then we will go home.

Day on day after that, we will spend more and more time with them - building on our presence around them. The entire process has been thought out by the social workers and the foster carers to almost imprint us on the kids - to ease their way into their new family. We will end the week waking them up in the morning, and returning them at bedtime. Each time we bring them to visit our house we will also be bringing their belongings. Our house will become theirs, and they will be helping that happen.

We will visit the oldest child’s school to help say goodbyes - we will meet teachers and friends, and be proudly shown schoolwork.

Rolling through next weekend, we will have them all day each day. With a little luck a little normality will descend, and make the final journey from the foster carer to our house a natural one early the following week.

I am writing this today because the likelihood of writing much after this weekend will be remote. On Monday the real test begins - we find out just how much the preparation, the hoops and the trials have been worth. We will find out in a sudden and probably jarring manner what it is to be called Mum and Dad. I have no idea how we will react to it.