We Went to Court and Later We Voted

I guess the best thing that I can say about our experience in Juvenile Court is that our petition was filed :) We started off with a slow drive in the snow and traffic, and got to the court house around 8:30, the time of our hearing. Mark dropped Steven and me off at the door while he went to see if there were an alternative to on-street parking (no, there wasn't). I went in and found out that you cannot have cameras in the court house. Of course, I couldn't call Mark on his cell to let him know that he needed to come and get it because our cell phones were hidden in the car. (We had been told about them, but not the camera.)

By this time, we are late. When Mark went to run the camera back to the car, Steven and I walked all over before we found an elevator, only to find that there was no 4th floor. Instead, it was in another wing. As I was finding this out from someone on the 3rd floor, we ran into Mark (who hadn't found the elevator and instead had taken the stairs). So we went back down, over to the other wing, and took another elevator up to the 4th floor.

We found our room, only to find out that no, it wasn't our room. So we were sent to the adoption information desk. That's when we found out that our social worker wasn't there and that they had not heard from her. Lovely.

To make a long story short, we ended up with the crankiest clerk around who told us that we need originals of our birth certificates and marriage license and that the copies submitted were not enough. She said that she couldn't file our petition without them, but then she did. Then she asked where our adoption database was. Our social worker (who was the agency director) had never heard of it, but the clerk said that she could not file our petition without it. But then she did. Then she wanted to know why we had already signed our paperwork and told us that we normally do it at the court house and since we had already done it, our trip down was pointless. What????

In the end, it was filed. After six months, we'll get Steven's new birth certificate. We accomplished our task, but had no nice pictures, and not really any nice memories either. However, we left with the cutest little baby who is now (almost) our son!

Dressed in his "little man" outfit.

It's too big, so it makes him look huge (like a football player according to my mom)!

We also voted that night after Mark got home. Steven was the youngest voter of the day (the oldest was 99!). He enjoyed showing off his smile to all the workers, and, of course, they absolutely loved that!

For Mom--Mark noticed the green boogies in the picture too!