Court and Surprises!

Ok, well, surprise surprise, I am backed up on blogging! Looking back over everything, this blog is a great place to keep memories of our adventure in adopting, and I wanted to be sure to blog about Tuesday.

This week was always going to be crazy! It is my last week of work for my job, and I knew it was the point of no return in terms of going to get my last bits of paperwork done and finishing up at the office. Because my mom is here to help out this week, and she also wanted to spend some time with my sister, our driving schedules were starting to look like Grand Central Station. Should I take Leah and spend the night at Judy's on Sunday? And if so, would my mom then spend the night as well and come to my office to get Leah from me after work? Because I had to stay over at Judy's again Monday night so I could leave bright and early to pick up Tasha to go to court.

Finally, we decided to be bold and ask Tasha to spend the night with us on Monday. Now I know, I know many of you probably think that is the nuttiest thing you've ever heard. And if I had suspected I'd have this kind of relationship with my daughter's birthmother, I'd have thought I was totally out to lunch too! But we've just been extremely fortunate to have made this match and been able to have such a good relationship with Tasha. The three of us call it "The Match Made In Heaven". So I sent Tasha a text and asked if she would like to come spend the night with us and she said she would. So I spent Sunday night with Leah at Judy's, went to work with Leah who was the hit of the office, and then we drove to Glen Burnie to pick Tasha up and bring her back to Fredericksburg. Now even I admit this is probably a little bit past the 'normal' birth parent/adoptive parent relationship, but as the old saying goes, "What is normal anyway?!" It worked for us. My mom spent Monday cleaning the house and preparing for Tasha's arrival and we got back around 9:00. She loved the house, loved Leah's room, said TomTom was the biggest rabbit she ever saw in her life, and we all ate chocolate chip cookies and then tried to go to bed.

I say tried because Leah decided that Monday night was the best night ever to throw her first temper tantrum. And I am not kidding when I say this kid was SCREAMIN'! OMG. After about 45 minutes, I just couldn't do it any more. I had been up since 5:00am, it was now midnight, I'd been driving all over God's green Earth, I had NOT gotten my work done so I was facing another day in the office, it was NUTTY. So I told Michael to please go downstairs and get my mom. She came upstairs, blinking in the light, and I sobbed, "I think the Chinese tainted her formula with paint chips" and thrust Leah into my mom's arms. I was crying, Michael was crying, Leah was crying. My mother said, "There are no paint chips in her formula!" and I said, "Well then the aliens have come down and swapped babies because my baby has never acted like this before." After about an hour, Leah sort of settled down, but the minute I put her in her crib, bang, she was off crying again. So I was like, "Screw this, it's nearly 2am, and I'm exhausted" and I picked her up, put her in bed with us, and she went right to sleep.

I woke up four hours later so totally out of it that my first thought was, "Who put this baby in my bed?" When she is in a bad mood now, she has been affectionately dubbed "Paint Chip Baby".

So Tuesday morning we all get up, and by 10:00 we realize we need to start thinking about getting ready to leave for the court date. I am a planner, I admit, I like to have A PLAN in place, but my mom is an uber-planner and wanted to know everything we had planned for the day--who was going in which cars, what we would do afterwards, etc. I honestly couldn't get past arriving at the courthouse. I just couldn't. I really had no idea what to expect from the hearing, I didn't know who was meeting us there, we didn't know if Tasha's attorney would be coming, the whole 9 yards. So I couldn't be much help. My mom feels better in times of stress knowing exactly what's going to happen and having a firm grip on the situation. In times of stress, I just give up and let nature take its course. It was kind of entertaining.

I had determined that we needed to leave at 11:00 to go to the courthouse. My internal clock told me this would be the right time to leave, so by 11:00, after 3 wardrobe changes on my part (new dress required a slip which I didn't have, suit was way too big, third choice suit was too big but at least it stayed up), we headed out--my mom in her car, Tasha, Leah, Mike, and I in our car. We made it to the courthouse around 11:20 and got past the metal detectors by 11:30, but had no idea what to do after that. Tasha found a list on the wall of all the court cases for civil court, but we weren't listed. Finally, a sheriff took pity on us and told us that we needed to go to the juvenile court clerk to find out which courtroom we were going to go to, and it turned out we were going to the basement court room. We went to get on the elevator, only it's a trick elevator, when you try to go from the basement to the first floor, it automatically goes to the second floor. So we had to wait for it to come back down before we could get on to go to the basement (the stairwells are protected and you need a special badge to go up and down them).

We got the basement and there was an austere little waiting room down there--about 15 chairs arranged in a square. At least we knew that our case was for that day, because there was NOBODY down there--it was dead quiet and a completely uninspiring decor. I guess I pictured adoption court as being kind of warm and fuzzy. But as you can see from this picture, it was deadsville. Finally a couple of deputies came out and asked if we were there for the Baby Girl X case, and we said yes, and that put our minds at ease a bit, since they were expecting us. They admired Leah for a while and then disappeared and then Colleen, our attorney arrived. She introduced herself to Tasha and I introduced my mom and the next thing out of her mouth was, "We have a small glitch."

Well, I don't have to tell you, my heart sunk to my shoes, my mother about had a coronary, and for once in his life, Michael was struck speechless. It turns out that the guardian ad litem they had selected was not actually on the list of approved GALs for the county and would not be able to act on Leah's behalf that day. Colleen was halfway through explaining that we just had to get a new court order to do something when a voice behind her said, "You have a GAL and I'm it!" and our hero, Brenda, introduced herself as the pinch hitter. We all started breathing again. Colleen spent some time with Brenda explaining that Leah's father had never replied to the letters sent to his home and getting Mike, Tasha, and I to all sign a paper requesting that the courts grant the custody transfer. And then over the loudspeaker, we were called in to the court room, at which point Leah decided to start screaming. It was nearly impossible to hear what the hell was going on, and finally after a couple minutes of Colleen trying to talk over Leah's wailing, I told my mom, "Mom! Just feed her!" So Mom slapped a bottle in Leah's mouth, and she was happy as a little clam.

The next part was for Colleen to read over the legal agreements with Tasha. Tasha was sworn in and asked a bunch of questions, such as did she know she had alternatives to the adoption including keeping the child and raising her herself, did she want or had she been offered counseling, was she sure of who the birth father was, did she belong to any Native American tribes, was she being coerced into the adoption by anyone in any way, etc. Once she answered all their questions to her satisfaction, she was given the court documents and asked to read them and sign them. Then Colleen explained to her that she had two options for that day, she could choose to terminate her rights effective immediately or she could choose to retain a 7 day waiting period during which she could change her mind at any time. She elected to terminate her rights immediately.

Once she signed everything, Colleen gave all the forms to Judge Daltan and then Brenda had a few questions and Colleen discussed the birth father with the judge. We all had a good laugh over the fact that FedEx confirmed delivery and that the package was signed for by a 'receptionist' at the man's residence, which was presumed to be his wife. Everyone expected that Mister had a real bad day after that.

After Brenda agreed that everything looked to be in order, the judge agreed and signed off on everything. With his signature, both Tasha's and the birthfather's rights were immediately terminated and Leah was put into our custody legally for a period of one year. Colleen then explained to us that all this did was set the clock ticking for us to have our social worker visits and that in about 6 months, we would appear again before the circuit courts to have the custody arrangements made permanent. This gives the courts time to make sure we are not abusive or neglectful and that Leah will be fine under our care.

A new court date was set for April 27, 2010 (again, we will go to court long before this) and the judge wished us well and sent us out. We packed up Leah and headed out. When we got back to that stupid waiting area, the dams burst. Tasha stepped towards me, handed me Leah, and said, "Congratulations, Susan." I ignored the baby, wrapped my arms around Tasha and started to weep. Having now been a mom for 3 glorious weeks, I can appreciate the act of courage it took that wonderful young woman to do what she did. I honestly can't imagine doing it myself. I heard her say, "are you OK, Mike?" and I grabbed him and the three of us crowded around Leah, hugging and crying while Mom and Colleen looked on. What do you say when "Thank you" does not even begin to cover it? We told her how much we loved her, we thanked her a million times, and we just hugged her and all of us were crying. Finally we all got it together, and Colleen stepped forward and said it really was wonderful that we had such a fantastic relationship and how unusual it was.

And we thanked her of course for all of her hard work. Seriously, there is no way you can find a better attorney than her for an adoption. We had to go upstairs to get the official decrees from the clerk, and once they were there, we were ready to leave, custody order in hand! We knew Tasha wanted to get back to Maryland ASAP as her 2 year old was coming home and *drum roll* because she (Tasha) had gotten married last week and her new husband was missing her! So we all stopped at McDonald's for a quick lunch, and then Michael, Leah, Tasha, and I hauled butt up to Maryland. Once we got to Tasha's place we went in for a bit, fed and changed Leah (who still HATES being in the car) and then it was time to go. It was bittersweet, but I am sure we will see Tasha again, and I've already heard from her, so I didn't shed any tears at saying "See you later" (we didn't say good bye :-D).

Michael, Leah, and I rolled it on south and I decided to obey the letter if not the spirit of the law by taking my family of 3 onto the HOV lanes of 95. WOW WAS IT AWESOME! We rolled past all the traffic on 95 at 4pm and made it home before 5:00. I'm not traveling 95 without my hubby and my daughter ever again. YEAH BOYS!

So we were rolling up our street and I was thinking, "Those kids better have cut the lawn today!" and as we got close to the house, I started seeing the kids moving around the lawn and I was feeling good. But then I noticed something crazy was sitting in the yard, and I said, "What the hell?!" Michael was grinning ear to ear. I said, "Honey! Someone put a giant sign in our yard!" And then I nearly drove off the road and into our neighbor's yard. I was like, "AWWWW!" because the sign is just SO CUTE and Michael said, "yes, Amy Wells took care of that!" and I was like, "OH MY GOD! AMY!?" and I got all misty-eyed. And then I damned near drove past our driveway.

So once we were inside, my mom told me all about Amy's cousin coming up to the house and installing the sign, and apparently while she was here, our neighbor Jean came over to see the baby (surprise, we were in Maryland, poor thing has stopped by twice and no baby!) after seeing the sign go up. Mom handed me all the paperwork about the sign which I immediately read to see if I might be able to keep it, but there was a pick up date on the slip (Damn it!!!! I LOVE THE SIGN AND WANT TO STEAL IT :-D)

So once the kids were done with the front yard, I told my mom, "I want pictures with the sign!" I gathered up Leah and Michael and we went out front and took some pictures. I didn't even want to waste time putting my shoes on--out we went! I just stood admiring it for a long time.



Then we took our first family "portrait". I gave my mom a little artistic direction, she was getting all of us into the shots, so she'd take a picture and I'd say, "no, zoom it closer!" and she'd take another one, and I'd say, "No, zoom it closer!" until we got this:



Which I absolutely LOVE. :-)

That night to celebrate the fact that on Sunday, Leah's umbilical cord stump FINALLY fell off, we decided to give her her first bath. Wash off the dust of the past and start her with her new family squeaky clean. Um, yeah, she pretty much hates us now.



We got it all on videotape, which I loved. It was absolutely hilarious, the level of her outrage over that bath. When she's unhappy, the entire world knows she's unhappy. I can't wait to give her another one :-)

So that was our court day. Wednesday I went back to work alone to finish up what I could of my caseload and pack up my desk and head out. It felt so weird. But it also felt really, really good. I have been anxious for this day to come, and I know that I will see my co-workers again, so I can't get too gloomy about it. I arrived home to a beautiful flower arrangement from my wonderful in-laws. Don't you love the little duck planter?

Today my mom and I gathered supplies for our freezer cooking fun, she made spaghetti sauce, and we took Leah for a walk. I've noticed that Leah sleeps A LOT better when she gets a walk in the fresh air and she sleeps TERRIBLE when she doesn't, so I'm attempting to walk her every night unless the weather is not good. She more or less sleeps through the walks, which is fine, but her nighttimes are much more mom-friendly.

Speaking of which, I'm going to hit the hay while I can still get a couple of hours sleep! G'night all!