It's no secret that we've had a rough couple of days. Things got wierder and more convoluted through the weekend and, as you read, we began to lose a lot of hope. We learned that the baby's birth father's parents are interested in parenting the baby, but that T still wants to place her with us. And, just so you get that out of your minds and can read on in peace, we did learn this afternoon that if he and T both sign their relinquishment papers with a plan to place her with us, then the grandparents cannot challenge the custody decision of the parents. Still, we hoped to have an extended group of love and support around Meadow through this adoption, not create any adversarial relationships for anyone, so we hope Meadow's birth grandparents will be happy with T's decision.
Lots of recommendations came in from all of you to "go out and do something stress free", but we know ourselves and this follows us wherever we go. However, I can tell you that bottling it up in our hotel room was not therapeutic, to say the least.
There are nuggets from our training earlier this year that surface every once in a while through this experience. They are only appropriate when they're needed most, so it's been helpful that they show up when they do. After our "crazy" fit this morning, Josh remembered that we learned to be guided by our hearts, not our heads. Logistically speaking, the head has to intervene to make sure this is all still feasible. But, our problems lately have arisen from our leaning more on our heads for how to feel than our hearts. That breakthrough memory opened up Team Hope to a renewed way of thinking. And, I'm happy to say that even the one of us that had lost hope over the weekend is back on board!
If you remember, last Sunday we were worried that if we left for Yosemite, we would be out of cell range and miss "the call". Today, we acknowledged that a watched pot never boils, so we got out of the kitchen altogether. T seems to be the only person I've ever known who can go this far past her due date and not act like she'd go into labor any minute, so we left. We needed to find more 100-year-old trees (or 500-year-old as the case may be) to focus on.
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| Behold, the Mighty Sequoias! |
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| Josh is showing you where he proposed to me at the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. |
We spent the afternoon walking through the trees, hugging in the shadows of the mountains and reliving a lot of childhood and pre-wedding memories. It was wonderful. Every once in a while, we'd allow ourselves to think about what we're doing here, but it often came out as a hopeful reference to when we would bring Meadow to meet Yosemite one day, or some such daydream. Just like the old times of two weeks ago.
We made the mandatory stop in the Village Store. This used to be so I could find my one, shiny rock in the gift shop that I just had to have. This time, it was with a mild curiosity to see if the personalized keychain and fake license plate racks had "Meadow" in the M section. Stop laughing!
For those of you still getting used to her name, we thought we'd share a scene from our life together that has always inspired us. This might be one of the most beautiful Meadows we know...so far!
On our way back, we stopped for dinner, and a celebratory margarita. We were celebrating several things: a few shared moments of laughter today; the peace we felt driving through the mountains that all of this will happen as it should; and the hope we felt again that it will happen as we want it to. We decided to text T to rub it in a little and offer that we would toast to her with a margarita if we could take her out for one. She responded with "Thanks, but by the time I can have one, you'll be busy with your baby."
That was a first from her. "Your" baby. Our hearts soared.
