Moments

There are so many moments when I just want to fall flat on my face and thank the Lord for choosing me to be Maggie's momma.

Tonight was no exception.

As I walked with Maggie back to her room tonight, she stood at the rocker and said, "Momma....hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm" (humming).

I said, "You want Momma to sing to you?"

Maggie "Yeah yeah ... Momma sing"

...and with that, I scooped up my not-so-little one into my arms, began to rock and sang my sweet girl to sleep.

Thank you Jesus!

Lately it's all been about the "B"

B is for.....

Babies ~ Maggie & I were able to celebrate the arrival of Nate Ryan to our friends Erica & Colin, at his welcome home shower this weekend. Maggie did a good job of hanging tight to Momma. She just loves baby "Naaaayte!" Every baby is a Nate now...too cute! We are so thankful to be a part of Erica & Colin's journey to parenthood and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord bringing Nate home to be with them!

Bubbles ~ I seriously don't know what we would do without bubbles. It's all about the bubbles lately. We are thankful for cheap entertainment! Maggie goes berserk over bubbles! Bubbles bubbles bubbles everywhere...everyday...she just gets the biggest kick out of them and is always all smiles! (except when it's time to come inside)

Bluebonnets ~ well, it's that time of year here in Texas, but unfortunately we didn't get a lot of rain, so the bluebonnets have been less than stellar this season. We did venture out yesterday to take some photos. We found a new spot but apparently, we were some of the last to check it out, since most of the bluebonnets were trampled on. I was able to get some decent photos, even with the fact that Maggie wasn't too interested in posing. The only time I was able to get any pictures of her sitting down, was because she fell. She was more interested in the rocks or going over to the playground. The positive thing is that there is always next year! She sure looked cute, though :)

Big girl room ~ even though we transferred out of the crib and into the big girl bed about 2 months ago, I haven't really had a chance to work on anything else in Maggie's room....slowly but surely I will get the decorations on the walls! I actually tried to hang the curtains today and after putting 6 holes in the wall, decided that it wasn't quite working for me. So, I have re-caulked the holes and waiting for it to dry...and will try again later! UGH!

That's about it from here. Nothing new to report on Maggie's case, other than the next court hearing is April 20th...and hopefully everything will be taken care of then!

Frustrated....

that's what I am tonight. We've had this court date for almost 3 months. We were told that everything was done. There was nothing left to do, except wait for the court date to arrive. Our biggest challenge was met when Maggie's birth mother relinquished her rights last week. So, we went in today's court hearing as just a formality.

Thankfully all the paperwork signed by the birth mother was done correctly and there were no issues there! Thank you Lord! Now, it was just a matter of terminating the rights of the "alleged" father. As the birth father's attorney submits all the paperwork, it is determined that there is a problem. One piece of information was missing. Are you kidding me?! Basically there is a database that has to be searched for all birth parents and apparently, even though the search was completed, the attorney did not have the proof of the search. So, if that one piece of information had been there today, his rights would have been terminated, and we would finally be on our way to officially adopting Maggie. But alas, it was not...and court has been rescheduled for April 20th (the next available court date!). Again, it will just be a formality to enter this one last document into the court, but I'm still frustrated.

I feel like our whole adoption journey has had it's share of setbacks, but are they really setbacks? We might think that they are, but in the end, we have to remember that everything happens when it's supposed to happen. I just remind myself that if we had been matched with a child on any other day than July 10th, we wouldn't be the parents of Maggie Joy. Thank you, Lord, for your perfect timing and your perfect plans.

So, tonight, we remain thankful for the Lord's faithfulness and His protection and provision over our family.

Court Tomorrow

Just a quick note to ask that you be praying that all goes well tomorrow afternoon at the final hearing for Maggie's case. It is @ 1:30pm. They will be submitting the birth mom's relinquishment papers into court as well as officially terminating the "alleged" father's rights. We're hopeful that all will go smoothly tomorrow, with no issues!

We'll let you know something as soon as it's over.

Love,
Courtney, Michael & Maggie

Persistence

I've always known that I could be somewhat of a persistent person (some of you are laughing right now!) and that has definitely helped us on our journey to Maggie. It's amazing to me how little people communicate. I realize that we are not their only case, but this is our only case. I've also learned that if you don't ask the questions, you won't necessarily get the answers. I've also learned that sometimes you have to be a pest to have someone listen to you. In the process of fostering to adopt, you truly are your own advocate. Sure, we've had some great people on our side ~ our agency caseworker, Maggie's CASA advocate, Maggie's CPS caseworker ~ but even then, the communication is brief, staggered, or different (depending on who you are talking to at the time).

I've learned how to "play" the system with caseworkers and how to get information without trying to make it sound like that's what I'm after (ha!) I'll send an email asking a question about something that I may already know the answer to....only so that I can lead into a question, like....oh, by the way, any word on this? or that? It's worked every time! :)

Today was proof that my playing the game and persistence paid off.

I had been on the phone with Patti, Maggie's CASA advocate, that morning trying to see if there was any new information. Patti was more frustrated than me, because she hadn't heard anything from anyone either (again, great communicating between the different entities).

I told her I was going to email Cory @ CPS. I did and this basically what I wrote: Hey Cory, hope you're doing well. I just wanted to confirm what time we are supposed to be in court on Monday, as my agency caseworker is going to be there to represent us. If you can let me know if it's at 9:30 or 1:30 that would be great. {I already knew that it was 1:30}. Oh, by the way, I'm guessing that no news on Maggie's birth mom signing relinquishment papers last week means that she didn't do it...or do you know anything differently? Thanks.

***Side note....we didn't tell anyone, because it's been going back and forth and we weren't holding our breaths, but we received a call late Thursday night informing us that Maggie's BM was going in to see the atty on Friday morning to sign the relinquishment of rights papers. We never heard from anyone on whether or not she showed up or not. No one seemed to know.***

Here's the email response I got back from Cory:
"I ran into BM's attorney yesterday at court and she did relinquish!!!!! It was on Monday. She did sign, she wants to be able to write letters and receive letters but she signed it!"

What?! Are you kidding me?! WHOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOO! I couldn't believe it! We've been so worried and consumed with wonder and worry these past 6 days, not knowing what happened. So many questions and thoughts went through our minds. Did she show up? Did she sign? Why didn't she show up? What does that mean for Monday? Will the judge give her more time to relinquish (which is typical)? Will we have to wait until June (which would be 1 year since Maggie was removed from her birth mom) to be able to terminate? And the list could go on and on....

If Cory hadn't have run into her attorney at court, we'd still be wondering. We'd still be waiting. I mean, seriously, how difficult would it have been for the attorney to respond to all the inquiries and just answered "yes" to did she sign? Not too hard, if you ask me. But no one asked me.

I'm glad that I was persistent. This whole experience has shown us how much we take our emotions into our own hands. It's so easy to say all the right things and to tell ourselves that we need to trust in the Lord and to give all of this to Him, but we are so quick to take them back and hoard them and keep them all to ourselves. And in the end, all we did was cause ourselves worry, sleepless nights and stress.

So, where do we stand right now? All parties involved (except for us) will be in court on Monday to present all the signed papers. It's basically a formality. Then the unknown birth father's (this is a whole other post) attorney will terminate his rights. Then within a few weeks, our CPS caseworker will transfer our file to the adoption division, where we have been told, that we will be assigned to our first caseworker, since she handles all the adoptions. This is great news for us, as we have a great relationship with her and she has been involved with our case since the beginning. This should hopefully help hurry things along. It will then take another month or so to get our paperwork done and on to the attorney to get us on the judges' docket. We've been told that adoptions are only done twice a month in Montgomery County, so this is why it will take a few extra months to get finalized.

But honestly, the hardest, most stressful part is over. What was supposed to be an open & shut, no worries, easy, no risk case turned out to be much more than that. The Lord knew what He was doing when He revealed very little to us at the beginning. It is very likely that without the Lord's guidance, we could've missed out on our beautiful sweet blessing, Maggie Joy. We still have some months before she is legally ours, but we are so thankful that this part of the story is closed.

I think this Momma & Daddy will sleep a little better tonight...

We are so thankful for all your prayers and love along the way. You have walked through the valleys and mountains of our journey and we love you all so much because of it. The Lord's faithfulness and love towards us is overwhelming ~ we just know that He has great plans for our sweet little girl.

Let's be honest...

Motherhood is hard! I think we all like to make it look like we've got it all together...and I'm sure that there are some mommas out there who do have it pretty darn close, but let's be honest....I don't have it all together, and it's is more than hard.

Maggie is going through a phase right now...and to be honest, it's hard to know if it's just because she is 2 or is it because of her past or is it a combination of both. I believe that it's a combination of the two. Unfortunately, for us, in our situation, it's hard to know. And we don't want to label Maggie with any of these possible issues, but then again, we don't want to ignore them either.

I could write a post about the major meltdown that took place at Target on Friday when Maggie saw the end cap of bubbles and GASP! Momma did not stop to put any in the basket....but I won't.

I could write a post about Maggie throwing a fit so big that people walking by stopped to ensure that my child hadn't been seriously injured at a birthday party when she took another little boy's cheerios out of his diaper bag and began eating them...but I won't.

I could write a post about when Maggie didn't get her way tonight she pulled my shorts completely down (thankfully at home)...but I won't.

I could write a post about how I saw an acquaintance this weekend that I hadn't seen since we brought Maggie home and she told me that I looked miserable....but I won't.

I could write a post about how we are trying to break Maggie of her ba-ba (bottle) habit for nap and bedtime and how well that is (not) going...but I won't.

I could write a post about how many times I hear the word "no" in one day...but I won't.

I won't because 1) I don't have the energy to relive it. 2) I am afraid that others will think that I'm a horrible mother. 3) I really do try and focus on the positives.

Those closest to me try to remind me all the time that our situation isn't normal. I didn't have 9 months to physically prepare for my child to be born and then get 17 months to prepare for a 17 month old. No, I was stationary one day and mobile the next...and haven't stopped moving since! I don't have a daughter who was brought up in a safe and secure environment from her first day of life. She didn't get that until 17 months later.

For all the many things I could blog about and won't....there are that many more things that I am blessed with. That sweet little girl who throws tantrums, screams in public places, pulls my shorts down, makes her momma look tired, is dependent on a bottle to sleep, and says "no" way too many times to count is the greatest blessing in my life. And even though she does all those things, she loves her momma more than I ever thought was possible. I can't imagine my life without her. It's as if she has been with us all along. She makes us laugh, brings us great joy, and touches us deep down in our soul.

At the end of the day, when I rock Maggie to sleep, I reflect on what the Lord has given me. I'm a momma...and I love it...but let's be honest....it's hard.

Sweet blessings

****Updated...the sweet little bundle of blue joy has been named....NATE RYAN!*****

Along this journey, the Lord has brought some very special into our lives...that honestly, we probably wouldn't have met otherwise.

One of those sweet people is my friend, Erica.

Erica & Colin have been given the sweetest blessing this evening, when they welcomed home their 6.5 lb bundle of blue joy! (no name yet!)

We are rejoicing in the goodness of the Lord and the beginning of a wonderful life together as momma, daddy and son!

We love you guys and couldn't be happier!

News....

Still no news. We have no idea of what is going on with Maggie's case. We were notified on Tuesday afternoon that the mediation for Wednesday was canceled. The DA said that it was understood that the birth mom was going to relinquish her rights.

We were under the impression that they were going to make sure that this happened at the mediation.

We are beyond frustrated. No one is telling us anything. No response to voicemails or emails. Patti (CASA) can't even find out anything. It makes us a bit nervous, but we're trying really hard to not and figure it out. It's impossible to know and even more so to NOT run through every scenario in our minds.

CASA did tell us that the only way an attorney would cancel mediation is if paperwork was already signed or in the process of being signed. Otherwise, if we go to court on the 16th and the paperwork isn't signed, the attorney would be in serious trouble. That's all fine and good...but if it's that simple, how hard is it to just drop us a quick email to say "paperwork started" or "paperwork signed"....pretty easy if you ask me!

If only it were as easy as what one of my sweet friends wrote on my facebook:
"Yes, here is your update. You and Michael rock, the girl is yours, done. That's how I would do it anyway. :) " (thanks Melissa!)

We're frustrated and stressed and tired and losing patience...but thankful for a God who stays true, calm, aware and more than patient with His children! Thank you Lord for all that you're doing, even when we're not sure what that is!

Keep praying :)

Mediation Cancelled

Just received an email from the Montgomery County DA's office informing us that Maggie's mediation hearing tomorrow has been officially cancelled as "evidently birth mother has decided to reliquish her parental rights."

Ok....we knew that this was her intention....

So, now the big question is....HAS SHE SIGNED THE PAPERS????

I've called and emailed every person involved in the case and can't get anyone......c'mon people....this momma and daddy want to know!!!!