We Can Breath A Little Lighter

I was privileged to come home today exactly as I left, with a baby carrier containing an almost 1 month old baby boy.

Court went as expected this morning, the judge granted the county's request for Iggy to stay in care until his next case review in six months and his mother did not object. So now, he will be with us at least until he is 7 months old and then hopefully longer.

Arriving this morning at the court house I saw Iggy's birth mother sitting in the assigned waiting room so I steered the stroller in her direction and plopped myself down in the seat next to her. We sat there for quite a while with one another trying to make small talk, which is made more difficult by the fact that she speaks limited English, not to mention the awkwardness of the situation. We have never been alone with one another before. The worst part of the day was finding out that today is her birthday. "Happy Birthday Lady, sorry you cannot have your kid back for at least six months." Ugh.

My sympathy wained a bit after she revealed to her case worker that the reason she had missed some of her court ordered urine analysis tests was due to the fact that she did not have the $5.00 required to pay for them, all while sporting a pack of Newports in her jacket pocket. There's your 5 bucks. A tad judgmental I know, but if he were my child I would be doing absolutely everything I could to get him back.

All in all it was an easy and pleasant experience (as pleasant as it possibly could be based on the circumstances) and definitely eye opening. I am an avid people watcher, not in the creepy- get-yourself-arrested kind of way, but in the harmless, sit-and-be-nosy-while-pretending-to-read kind of way. Some of these cases were just sad. Iggy's is quite tame in comparison.

I guess I better go clean out that dresser.