The Big Finish

Today our journey to become a family ends. Now it becomes a different sort of story, but probably not one any more unique or exciting than any other family's story. Even at their worst, the last five months have been better than I ever could have imagined. I love coming home to my daughter's smiles, and had no idea how great it could be to be a father. A lot of our friends have warned me not to wish Riley's youth away waiting for her to hit new milestones, but that hasn't really been a problem for me. I'm not waiting for her to crawl, or walk, or talk - I'm just enjoying watching her grow and explore the world around her. We're really fortunate to have her.

I suspect this will be our last post, so I'll wrap up the last 4 months since our last post.

• Riley's birthparent rights were officially terminated by the court in November.
• After a 30-day waiting period, we were able to schedule a finalization hearing for today.
• We've been counting down the days for the last week, but the actual finalization hearing was fairly anti-climatic, being handled as a phone conference that lasted less than 10 minutes. While the judge commended us for what we are doing, my favorite part of the hearing was when he asked us if we were Kentucky Wildcat fans and cautioned us that our answer was very important. When I spoke up and said "Absolutely not," the judge replied, "Good answer. Petition approved!"

And that's pretty much it. We celebrated with sushi at one of our favorite places here in town, then came home to give our little girl a bath and put her to bed. What a way to end a journey that we've been on for the last year and a half...