Welcome to the family MUAHAHAHA

I'm going to type this as quickly as I can, because Sir Tristan the Valiant doesn't sleep much, and is not such the fan of alone time.

We finalized Tristan's adoption on Monday. What that means is, it's done. All the legal work and risk periods and such are over, and he is now legally our son. Also, his name is legally changed to ours and we are put as his parents on his birth certificate. (not sure how I feel about that one)

The hearing was at 3, so we had an early lunch and then put everybody down for quiet time, and started assembling outfits. I found a couple of dress shirts, one suit jacket, one clip-on tie. Everything was a little bit too small, or had something wrong with it, but I figured it was at least a nod at dressing up... Once I started dressing them, there was much excitement in the land. Brynn thought we were going back to Hannah's wedding, and Toby had a LOT of questions about judges. They turned the volume level up to eleven and eventually the subject, heretofore known as Tristan Clark, eventually woke up and decided he was starving and had NO intention of sitting in a carseat while I spit-bathed his siblings and tried to convince them to stop hanging on my arm like a monkey so I could get their tights on for goodness sake.

Eventually, they were all basically dressed and ready, except for the MOG, who was mixing his CD in the basement with fierce dedication to his craft, to be interrupted by no man, or toddler. He strolled up at 2:30 in his white t-shirt and skinny jeans. "What?" he says. "I thought I looked pretty nice."

All of us, including my mom, piled into our minivan, aka the McDonald's dumpster, and drifted into traffic. We were running late, the baby was panicking and the GPS was not aware of a courthouse. (Side Note: if Apple ever makes a stand-alone GPS, I will pay any price, because it will be SMART)

If anybody had asked Tristan at that moment if he was cool with staying with this family FOREVER, it might have been iffy. We made it to court, and all the medium-smalls sat with Grandma while the teeny-small came up with us to the front part, heretefore called the judgy-microphone-table-thingy.

There was quite a bit of legal talk between our attorney and the judge and the social worker, while the MOG and I sat too close to a microphone to say any of our good jokes. Once it was our turn to be interviewed by our lawyer, Tristan woke up and showed the utmost disrespect to the court, but no one knew but me, because I could smell it. Upon his protest, he was whisked away by Grandma to the hall, and we said we'd take care of him, and we knew adoption was permanent, and so on, and then His Honor signed papers and we took a picture and went downstairs to file paperwork. So.

It's done, and I'm glad. He's been my baby since 5 minutes after he was born, but it feels good to give him our name. It's strange, too, because it feels different, looking at him and knowing he's permanent. I wouldn't have thought it would. We are so blessed to be his parents.

Susan met us at the van on the way out with bags and bags of Christmas presents from the birthfamily for him and the other kids. What an amazing journey we're walking out.