5 months

It's hard to believe that Sami turned 5 months old on Monday. It feels like just yesterday when she was born, and had to stay in the hospital for two weeks. I remember how much I missed her then when I couldn't be there, although I spent as much time as possible at the hospital holding her. Those two weeks felt like a lifetime, waiting to be able to bring her home with us where I already knew she belonged.

It's a relief to know that Elizabeth's parental rights have been officially terminated, but we are still anxiously waiting to be notified about the court date to finalize the adoption. I know it will be at least a month from now, possibly longer, but I am so happy to see the light at the end of this tunnel of waiting for Sami to officially be our daughter.

When I was talking with Elizabeth often, I was using a pre-paid cellular phone to keep our home number and my real cell phone number private. I had been renewing the phone every month, even though it's been since December since I have spoken to Elizabeth. I tried to call her over the weekend, but her phone number now belongs to a guy named Jason. So because today was the day to renew once again, I called our attorney yesterday to get her opinion on if she thought it was OK for me to not renew the phone, especially now that Elizabeth's rights have officially been terminated. The attorney said she thought it was fine, especially since it has been so long since either one of us have heard from Elizabeth. She said that if Elizabeth did try to reach me, as she is entitled to photos and news about Sami if she requests them, she would let me know. At that point either all of the communication could be done through the attorney and Elizabeth, with me passing on information to the attorney for her to pass to Elizabeth, or I could then decide to get another phone and communicate directly with Elizabeth if I prefer.

So after hearing the advice from our attorney, I replied that since Elizabeth's rights were terminated and she couldn't change her mind now, I was going to cancel the phone. She agreed, but then replied with "After all, you don't want to pay for the phone for another year!" I inquired what she meant by that, and she informed me that Elizabeth has one year to appeal the adoption. I was upset with the attorney as this was the first I had heard of this. She said that Elizabeth will probably never even request a photo of Sami, let alone hire an attorney and try to appeal the adoption. Still, it was a bit startling and upsetting to hear, and my telephone call to Steven confirmed that the attorney had never mentioned this before to us at any of our meetings, nor was it mentioned in the contract. I did even more research after that, and learned that it is almost impossible for Elizabeth to appeal the adoption after if it is finalized; she basically would have to prove that she was coerced to give her baby up for adoption. I have decided to put the thought out of my mind, otherwise I'll be spending another year in frantic worry.

Sami's five-month check up won't be until the end of next week, due to her being sick last month and us having to reschedule her four-month check up late, too, and since the visits are supposed to be 30 days apart due to her vaccination schedule all of her monthly appointments will be two weeks later than normal. I'm curious to find out her height and weight now. To me, she looks a lot taller as though she's had a big growth spurt. She is now wearing a combination of newborn-size clothing, and 0-3 month size clothing.

Sami stopped sleeping through the night again for some reason. She had been sleeping 10 hours at night, from about 9:30 p.m. until 7:30 a.m., however the past few nights she as fallen asleep before 8 p.m., then woke up around 1 a.m. and hasn't been going back to sleep until after 4 a.m. I'm hoping tonight will be better, because she fell asleep at 7:30 p.m., but woke up at 8:30 p.m., and I then I took her to visit my sister, brother-in-law and niece, and by the time we got back home and I changed her into pajamas and gave her a bottle, it was probably close to 11 p.m. before she fell back asleep. So I have high hopes that she will sleep through the night tonight once again.