Petition to Adopt!!

Woot woot!!

The petition to adopt arrived in the mail today. All we have to do now is sign it in front of a notary, have it notarized and mail back to the attorney.

We're going to do the big celebration ceremony, so we'll be waiting on a date still, but wow, just having this little piece of paper in our hands makes it so real that we're almost at the end of this part of our journey and on to the journey of a forever family.

Can't believe I'm looking forward to Monday now so I can get this notarized!!

Can't believe our wishes really are finally coming true!!

Will Finalization Time EVER get here?!

May 24th, we signed adoption papers, June was adoption board, it's been in the attorneys hands ever since and she's waiting on info from the social worker.  At that point, it has up to 60 more days for the agency to respond to the petition and then a wait on the court date?!

grrrrrr, I'm so ready for this to be over with.

Baby girl is having extreme anxiety over this and worried that we'll back out of the adoption and I think it'd do her a world of good for this stage of our life to be over with and her go back to trying to be a normal kid.

Baby hid a box of cake mix in her closet and had eaten part of it, is binging like mad, easy to trigger to tears now and I just want her to be able to relax and realize that despite all the hardships and trials she's been through, that she's worth every minute of time spent on her and deserves to be a normal child that she's missed being before.

On a positive note, her baby sister is in the middle of visits with her new parents and it sounds like it's going very well.  Hope she gets to move in before her birthday!!

Happy Birthday Baby!!

we celebrated the Princess's birthday Saturday before last!
she said this was the first "real" party she'd had, with friends and the whole nine yards.

We had the BEST time planning for it and while we were all worried that our expectations would be too high, it went super great. Well, except BFF putting a frog on our baby! lol

Even the cake exceeded expectations.

We expected a meltdown after the party (she usually has her meltdowns after really good things happen), but it was a pleasant weekend the whole time.

She had a pool party, lots of yoshis and peace signs and her favorite colors, her crush, her boyfriend and her 2 best friends, as well as family and other friends. I wonder if her boyfriend realized she was crushing on another guy, lol

My baby is 12. I'm not ready for her to grow up.  I told her we'd start going backwards, next year she'll be 11, the following 10.

She said she wished we'd found her at 3 and she could have had her childhood back.

How it breaks my heart to hear that, and yet, cherish that she wants to be here.

I love that girl, Have I said that lately?