Officially a family

Adoptive families often celebrate the day that their child's adoption was finalized as their forever family day.  I think that if our adoption would have been finalized in a reasonable time frame, that day would be our forever family day too.  Lily is adopted from Nunavut.  Because Nunavut used to be part of the North West Territories, they currently follow many of their laws until their own can be written.  We kind of fell between the old and new laws which added some complications for our adoption.  When you get custody of a newborn, the birth family has a time frame in which they can change their minds.  That time frame varies from place to place but is usually 3-10 days.  I thought I would worry about it constantly but it rarely crossed my mind.  I was too busy learning how to change diapers, give baths, and make bottles.  Perhaps the sleep deprivation helped. That time along with the next three months flew by.  Most adoptions in Canada take 3-6 months to complete.  Unfortunately the Nunavut social worker that had our case was also responsible for writing the new Nunavut adoption law.  Between changing laws, him being busy, and repeated lost paperwork, it took over two years for our adoption to be finalized.  It always crossed our minds that someone could take our daughter and we had heard horror stories of kids getting taken away because of an injury because it was easier to take them than to investigate.  When Lily fell off the bed we didn't take her to the doctor because of this fear.  Fortunately she was okay and it wasn't an issue.  We had reassurance from our social worker and from the social worker responsible for all Saskatchewan adoptions that no one was going to take away our daughter, but it was difficult not to worry.  By the time the adoption was finalized it was pretty anti-climactic.  Of course we were happy it was over, but because we had been a family for so long, becoming an official family didn't matter quite as much.  But I did cry when our lawyer called exactly one year ago today to tell me it was all over.  And I have spent the entire day thinking about exactly one year ago. 
One year ago today I received a phone calling notifying us that Lily was officially ours.  Her last name was changed to match ours and we were officially a family.  I called Scott and he went out and purchased a cigar to celebrate.  Even though it was fairly cold that night, he dug out a lawn chair and sat on our deck smoking his cigar and drinking a beer.  We had saved a bottle of champagne to drink the day things were official, but I was nine months pregnant and we decided that we should wait on that one.  We stayed up later than usual celebrating.  In the middle of the night, my water broke.  Scott stayed awake for the next 22 hours of labour while chewing gum the entire time to try to get the horrible cigar taste out of his mouth.

Within three days we became an official family of four.