Where do babies come from?

Ohio of course!

We are here and have been for 2 days. I had all intentions of updates, but this is exhausting (and I can't post pictures because if forgot the USB cord for the camera.)

The drive up was fairly easy and uneventful, but was LONG. We were a wee bit nervous when we pulled into the city limits and the first thing we saw was a club with exotic dancers - yikes!

Turns out, Tiffin is an amazing city. Imagine Homewood, AL or Franklin, TN on steroids. It is a rural town out in the middle of nowhere, so the demographic is much different than those places. Most of the awesome storefronts are empty. I keep looking for cute boutiquey stores and and neat local restaurants that would abound in the South in a place like this. Most of the homes appear to have been built in the late 1800s to early 1900s and by size of them, this used to be one of the places to live in Ohio. Unlike Homewood who boasts many small shotgun type houses, these are huge even by today's standards.

Since we arrived into town around midnight on Thursday, we came to the hotel and tried to sleep. I think we actually got around 4 hours in and then were up and ready to meet the social worker in the lobby to go to court.

In our last conversation with the powers that be in Ohio, we understood that we would be receiving legal custody of him yesterday. They changed things up and decided that initially we would be considered foster parents and would get legal custody sometime in the next 6 months - more than likely this will occur in September at the next court date.

We arrived at the courthouse and were excited to meet all the people who have worked so hard to take care of Quinn and facilitate his move to Alabama. His social worker, foster parents, CASA worker, lawyers, Guardian Ad Litem for his birth mother were all there. It was so overwhelming to finally hug all these very special people.

Court went fine, it was mostly just routine. Billy "took the stand" and I had to sit outside and it was done. We were officially given "foster parent" status of Quinn!

While we were filling out paperwork, his foster parents went, picked him up and brought him to us. It really wasn't pretty. His mom's were crying, he was confused and reaching for them, I was trying to be sensitive to him and them while wanting to squeeze him and make him love me. Billy and I left with him to begin the bonding process.

We thought we would bring him to our hotel room and spend time with him here. Upon entering the hotel, he freaked out. Much of our first day was spent in the car so he could nap and such. We returned him to his foster parents around 5 and enjoyed the evening together trying to process this big day.