We got our referral! And other joyous news.

Back in the beginning of May this year we received the file and photo for a little boy as a possible match. He was 18 months old and has a cleft palette. I was instantly smitten with the alluring brown eyes in his photograph and wanted to exclaim then and there "YES!". But we remained cautious and spoke with a couple of doctors about his file. With their assurances that, despite the cleft palette, the little boy seemed very healthy we called back our agency and accepted the referral for the little boy who is to be our son, Samuel.

There is of course more paperwork to complete. While we were waiting for referral one of our government documents, I-800A, expired. We knew this was going to happen with the ever increasing wait times of Chinese adoptions. But there general advice is to reapply closer to ones referral date or after. So before we can proceed with getting the paperwork submitted to bring this boy home, we have to reapply for the I-800A. And we are close to getting this completed as we had our official fingerprints done last week. Fingers crossed that we will be bringing our son home in late fall of this year.

We also have a very lovely, very independent, one year old girl that I delivered in May of last year. Her father named her Abigail.

I often pause now and try to imagine what having two toddlers in the house will be like. And I know my imagination is falling short. But that it will be wonderful and delightfully full of hugs and kisses if not a little noisy and messy now and then.

You should expect to see more frequent updates about the adoption here as this begins to draw to a close.

Happy New Year!

The Chinese New Year has begun, so please forgive my lateness in wishing you a happy one. Traditionally families will devote time to clean the home from top to bottom, so as to sweep out bad luck from the last year and to welcome in the good. There is a family feast and presents given. This is the year of the Tiger. Those born in the Tiger year are said to be vivacious and brave.

Update, Nothing to Update

It's been a few months with no news. But, there's been no news.

Today we received an email from the Agency with the status of dossiers at the CCAA. As much as I wanted to see our LID date listed under "Pending Referral" it stubbornly remained in "Translation".

I can't help but wonder if things would have been sped up had I had the dossier translated before it was sent to China. Though I shouldn't linger too long over those musings. They don't lead anywhere productive.

The Log-In Date

I fully sat down today with the intent of making an update about the adoption workshop we attended yesterday. But I also have a bit of good news to add to this. We have received word from the Agency that our Log-In Date came today. Our date: the 4th of November 2009.

The Agency sent along a travel guide as well with information about China and what to expect when we travel - rather silly since we are facing a three year wait for our referral to a child. But the fifty pages will give me thirty minutes or so of reading, that should make a dent in the wait right?

So, about the workshop yesterday at the Jewish Family Services office. It was an informative event though a bit on the doom and gloom side with the experts cautioning the prospective parents to expect the absolute worst in terms of development and behavior. Which was rather sad since we did get talking with other people who were just starting to consider adoption. Andrew and I referred them to some other, more positive, resources on the subject of adoption.

The highlight of yesterdays event though was the near smack-down an adorable set of twins (adopted from China) had over a cup of pretzels. They were the image of sugar and spice, all smiles and coy looks. Until one went for the others pretzels, but dad whisked one of them off before matters got worse.

So - the big wait begins. But the blog won't be silent, I'll be making regular updates on things. We will be able to see the process of our dossier each month as it moves through the CCAA. And in addition to that I'm going to be learning Mandarin and we will be experimenting with cooking traditional Chinese dishes. I know from other couples who have gone through this wait that we need to find things to do in order to keep our sanity.

Suggestions?

FedEx to China

On Friday I heard from the adoption agency that our dossier has been approved by the Chinese Consulate here in the States. It was being sent by FedEx to China. They expected it to arrive today. We are also being transferred within the agency to a new representative who will be working with us at this stage of the process.

What this means:
1) The paperwork is done. We are entering the waiting period for our referral to a child.

2) The waiting period for the referral is still somewhere around three to four years.

How things happen from here:
Our dossier will be received by the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) where it will be logged into their system. We will receive a log-in date (known as a LID) by which we can access the CCAA and see the status of our dossier. The dossier will be moving about to various departments within the CCAA as different pieces of paperwork are approved.

We are expecting to know our LID within three to four weeks.