just a post (no photos for now, i’m too exhausted) to let you know that we returned home this evening from our last required trip to Texas for baby dude’s adoption process.  we are finalized!  no more hoops! woo hoooooooo!

the legal part of the trip was actually very easy and even a little bit fun since we were one of nine families from our agency that were finalizing that day.  it was sort of a mini-reunion of our orientation group and what fun to see all of these people that we’d met just over a year ago, heard their stories about how they’d come to make the adoption decision, and here we all were with beautiful children.  awesome.

we snuck out a little early to drive 2 hours south of the city to pick up baby dude’s birthfamily to bring them along to camp.  Every summer, the adoption agency hosts this big reunion at a ranch near San Antonio and anyone affiliated with the agency is eligible to attend for the weekend.  I would say that our experience at the rance was a little …. mixed.  It was really the first “not-just-to-visit-family” vacation thing we’ve done with baby dude and it quickly became clear to me that i would need to adjust my expectations of what all could be accomplished (horseback riding? not really.  tubing down the river?  uh-uh.).  plus, baby dude and i both had yucky colds (stuffy sniffles, a little cough and a fever–super uncomfortable in the 100 degree weather!) which really put the brakes on our ability to really take advantage of the fun possibilities of the ranch.  I also found myself torn between wanting to have really deep conversations with the other adoptive families who were there and feeling like we needed to spend as much time as possible with baby dudes’ birthfamily because they so rarely get to see him and his birthmother especially has told me how much she misses him.  i noticed the same thing was true for other adoptive families who were there with their child’s birthmothers.  I know that it’s important for us to spend time with the birthfamilies, but I don’t know if the ranch (did I mention that it was 100 degrees? and that it wasn’t a particularly inexpensive place to stay?) was an absolutely necessary part of that particular equation.  I almost wonder if baby dude’s birthfamily wouldn’t have enjoyed a more private vacation with us instead–where we could just focus on each other without these distractions.  But perhaps my views are skewed because I spent so much time in the (thankfully air-conditioned) cabin sleeping off my cold.  bleh.

positive parts of the weekend included a “hayride” to a fantastic cowboy campfire breakfast (with the largest skillet of scrambled eggs i’ve ever seen!), snippets of really wonderful conversations that I did manage to sneak in with other adoptive families around the edges of other activities (hmmm… maybe that’s a motherhood thing?  no more long, heartfelt chats because someone’s kid always needs attention?), oddly enough–not feeling self-conscious about feeding my baby a bottle of formula because i knew no one there would judge me for not breastfeeding him, meeting baby dude’s birthmother’s new boyfriend that we’ve heard so much about (he’s a really nice guy and seemed surprisingly comfortable around all of this chaos), interesting conversations with baby dude’s birthmother on the way to and from camp, and seeing her have a chance to snuggle with baby dude and admire his little chubby baby self and his big beautiful smile.

i’ll attempt to post photos sometime this week….