Resolution

Court happened and Niblet's dad got full custody. Yay for Niblet and her dad!
We're even pretty relieved for everything to be over. No more "what-ifs". No more county f'ing everything up. Even the lawyer called her dad a "rare commodity" because he stepped up and did what he had to do.

We had Niblet for one day this weekend and she seemed really fine. She was happy to see us when we picked her up, but not super-clingy or anything. We get the impression that she still thinks of us as her primary parents, even though we only see her once a week. She doesn't mind being with him, but I suspect that she thinks of him more like daycare - eventually we'll come get her again.

He made a point of making sure we have his number and said we can take her whenever we want, so we're glad for that. We'll see her at least once a week for a while and then maybe regularly, or maybe just occasionally. We could take her for a weekend, or just go to the park one afternoon or something. I'm looking forward to seeing out it all pans out. Really, we could probably take her camping with us next summer, if we wanted to. As fostermama has said, it's kind of like being non-custodial parents. We didn't have a divorce or anything, but as far as Niblet's concerned, we are her parents, too, and she'll be happy to spend time with us!

Now we're on hiatus. No foster babies for a while. We're off the list.
We're signed up with our domestic private adoption agency, but we're not accepting a match where the baby would be due before mid-December or so. We need some time for ourselves.

I wish I could post a picture of Niblet for you guys. She's so freakin' cute. And the difference between when we got her and now is so huge - almost a year! We got a nice picture of us, Niblet and her dad outside the courthouse. He even asked for a copy of it. We have a photo album for him that we've already put a bunch of pictures in, so we'll print that one and some of the recent ones, and then they'll have a nice album full of her baby pictures.

We have hundreds more, too, that we'd be happy to share with Niblet when she's older, if we're all still in touch. And videos. She's just the cutest thing.

Okay, well, this post is all over the place, so I'll stop here. We're doing okay over here in FostermomLand. We're happy that we're not worried about Niblet and we're looking forward to what's coming up next in our lives.