Thursday - Relinquishment Day

Our first day as a four member (earthly) family. Things went pretty well. The boys (that's pretty fun to say!) slept well, ate well, and even traveled well. With two kids we were both more involved to get them ready and such, but it because clear why people say that having three is such a major change!

PA law says that birthparents cannot sign relinquishment papers until 72 hours after the birth of a baby. So even though we had temporary custody of Noah, his birthparents did not have to sign anything and could have asked for him back anytime. While we weren't terribly concerned about it after we met Noah's amazing birthparent's, there's always a little bit of worry.

This afternoon we all met in the lobby of the hotel our agency workers were staying in. By the time we got there the relinquishment papers had all been signed. We met the attorney who took the relinquishments and who is doing all of our ICPC paperwork. He's a Jewish attorney...and that's about all he had in common with the attorney we had for Caleb's adoption. In other words, he is a really nice guy and has been nice to work with. We also met his wife who was very nice and informed us that the story of Noah from the Bible is being read this weekend in every synagogue around the world. She loved that we named him Noah and she was really tickled when she found out we had a Caleb and a Joshua.

The relinquishment went pretty well. The best two things about it were that Noah's birthmom gave us three little blankets that she made for Noah, along with a stuffed animal, a cute onesie, and two pictures. One was Noah's ultrasound picture, which was really cool to get. The other was a picture of Noah's two biological sisters. Which brings me to the second best thing; We got to meet his biological sisters, who are 3 and almost 1, and are absolutely adorable.

After the papers were all signed, we went out to dinner. It was a nice dinner. We talked about a pretty wide variety of things. When the time came that Noah's birthparents needed to leave, the emotion of adoption was not absent. For the first time, we saw Noah's birthmom get emotional. She always tries so hard to put on a strong face. Our heart went out to her, and her selflessness was evident. While I know it was an emotional day, and I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for her to leave, her emotions came because of how much she loves little Noah, and he's lucky to have that love. After they left it was just the four of us and the Agency workers. We had a nice long chat about the details of this particular adoption, which was not a normal one. By that I am referring to Noah's exceptional birthparents. We talked about how evident God's hand was in this adoption, and we are so grateful for that.