Adoption Day

We have a son!

Yes, I know, that's old news. Dominic's been a part of our family for over five months now. (Side note: has it really been five months? Time flies!) But today, we can draw a close to the adoption process we started a year and a half ago - Dominic is now legally our son!

Waiting for the judge to hear our petition.

Around lunch time today, Brian and I picked Dominic up from day care and went downtown to the King County Courthouse. We had a 1:30 court time to go in, answer a few questions in front of the judge, and have the papers signed and finished. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but it didn't seem like it would be too crazy of a time.

1:30 was apparently the general time that particular court opened for the afternoon, and they were hearing a lot of different types of cases. The majority, in fact, were do-it-yourself divorce cases (ie, people representing themselves without lawyers) - not a happy bunch! Lucky for us, they took the adoption case first so we were able to get in and out.

Thanks, Judge Name-I-Don't-Know!

As soon as our case was up, the first thing they did was to swear us in. I think that's the first time I've ever been under oath - and maybe that's a good thing? The whole thing barely took 5 minutes from there: our lawyer summarized the facts of the adoption, the judge indicated he had reviewed all the necessary documents, and that was about it! He signed some papers, let us take a picture with him looking "judicial", and with that Dominic was our legal son. Definitely a lot quicker and more painless than I was imagining!

And now, life goes on. From all appearances, nothing's changed for us. I'm sitting at home typing this post; Dominic's across the room playing with some toys and Brian's puttering around doing random chores. But we now enjoy full legal parenthood for Dominic, along with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. And we can finally call the adoption process complete - at least until number two, that is!