Dancing on the Edge

Finally; Getting Off Our Butts

We live in a state where second parent/same-sex parent adoption is legal. We are VERY fortunate and it is something I do not take lightly. However, the majority of me is ticked off we even have to have something like this on the books. For us, both of our children were dreamed of, conceived by, birthed by and raised by not just me but by both D AND me. Without D, there would be no K's running around the world.

But - no matter how ridiculous I think it is that D has to adopt her own children, that's the way the world is at this point (and like I said: I know how incredibly fortunate we are to live in the state we do so we can both legally be declared as parents to these children).

Our first child was legally adopted by D when he was 7 weeks old. We started the legal ball rolling when I was 5 months pregnant with him and had the "post- placement social worker visit" when he was 16 days old. We went through an attorney and spent a lot of money on the process.

Our second child....well......we jumped on the legal stuff when I was 6 months pregnant but decided to try to work through the hoops ourselves to save money. Seemed simple enough: a call to the courthouse, a trip to the courthouse to pick up the paperwork, filing the paperwork, social worker visit, court date for adoption... however......the paperwork wasn't a second parent adoption request. It was a step-parent adoption request (they assured us it was the same thing. Yeah - ok.). The paperwork was hard to make heads or tails of so we put it off, fully planning to consult an attorney down the road (which D did....only to be more confused). Maybe we'd go through an attorney....or maybe D would hit the law library to figure it all out.

Uh huh.

The baby came and, shortly there after, D was admitted to law school. Excellent! We'll wait until she has the information to be able to do this herself and we will come out ahead in the money department. After all, baby K couldn't be more D's anyway. No big deal to wait. (yeah yeah - I know....something bad could have happened to me and then what? Well - odds were in our favor of baby K being placed with D anyway since D is the legal parent of big K and she can prove intent to legally parent baby K based on sperm bank receipts, doctor records, etc.)

But now....the waiting is finally over.

A few weeks ago D took the file of paperwork from big K's adoption and this time, instead of looking like legal mumbo-jumbo it actually made sense to her! Score!! She started creating documents and making phone calls and today we journeyed to the courthouse to file the initial paperwork to open the case. This afternoon we met with the social worker for the post-placement visit (which was a joke of the highest order. Even she thought it was ridiculous that D has to adopt her own child. She's basically updating the report from big K's visit and will submit that to the court. The kids had a great time playing with her though - so I guess all was not lost.).

Once the report has been filed, we will return to the courthouse to sign a few more papers and to receive the hearing date. The turn around time for a date is really fast so we fully intend for the adoption to be legalized by the end of the month. Excellent!

The hardest part in all this (besides handing over the money) is trying to make it make sense to a 4 year old. He doesn't understand it at all. What do we mean that his baby sister needs to be adopted by mom? He wanted to know if adoption would hurt baby sister and if they would have to put her through a machine. (I never really understood what he was getting at.) We explained the best we could but dang if it isn't difficult to make it understandable in his mind when frankly, I don't really understand the why.

But in the end; our children will legally have two mothers and will be legally protected (i.e.: social security benefits, health insurance, child support, etc.).
All children have a birth right to be protected. It's crazy that same-sex parents have to go to such lengths to protect their children. And crazier still that it's still illegal to do so in many states.

As great as all this is....there is still a HUGE part of me that is angry about it needing to be done. So much red tape to have someone bang a gavel and tell us what we already know: We are a family.