Our adoption case cleared court today and Milo is officially our son.

Woot, woot!

We’re obviously ecstatic. You can check out all the pictures of Milo over at Flickr. Many thanks to everyone who prayed that we’d make it through court OK.

From here they’re telling us it will be roughly 6-8 weeks until we can travel to Ethiopia and bring Milo home. Before today it was 5-6 weeks after we cleared court. I don’t know what changed that time frame, but I’m trying not to be bitter about it (It’s hard to be bitter on a day like today when we get the news, but I’m also tired of time frames always getting longer. I want to bring my boy home.)

I don’t know what else to say. We’ve been in this process since August 2007 (nearly 19 months now) and sometimes it feels like a labor that won’t end. But we’re getting close. So painfully close.

I wish adoption were easier. But I keep telling myself it has to be this hard and slow and expensive to make absolutely sure everything is in Milo’s best interest. And that’s worth it.

Update: OK, I’m still trying to tell myself that. But waiting sucks. This story of a kid crying for her adopted siblings made me bawl. It’s part joy, part longing, part aching—and part anger for the circumstances that make adoption necessary and the red tape so profuse. My head understands all that, but my heart doesn’t care.

Another Update: OK, the shifting travel times were apparently just a mistake. Forget 6-8 weeks, we should be able to travel in 4-6, which means late March or early April.