I took the Star Wars Personality Test

The Results were...

November 1st

There are some good signs that the cut off date for this months referrals will be November 1st, 2005.

Personally I am very excited by this because after last months 2 day batch I really did not expect that the CCAA would get out of October.

This doesn't seem like huge progress, but it is reported that these days have HUGE numbers of parents with LID.

So this seems like a huge accomplishment to me and now we just have to get through November before things pick up a little bit because of smaller months.

And since I guessed that the end of October would take 2 more months we just shaved a month off of our wait...

Florida in Spring of 2008

Well with the wait time for our adoption increasing by the minute Tammy and I have decided to start planning a Trip to Florida in May of 2008. With everything that is happening at work and at home we figure that we will seriously need the time away by next year this time.

Originally we had wanted to wait until after the adoption was completed to travel to Florida again because it would allow Kelly to experience Disney for the first time and it would allow Holly and Brina to meet her.

Now we figure we will be lucky to go to China to adopt her by the end of 2008 and we will need a distraction from everything next spring. In fact I could use one right now, but with everything going on at work it just isn't an option at this point.

Proof that we are not the only people looking for their child

A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in Sick one day.

Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he Dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper."Hello?"

"Is your daddy home?" he asked.

"Yes," whispered the small voice.

"May I talk with him?"

The child whispered, "No."

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your Mommy there?"

"Yes."

"May I talk with her?"

Again the small voice whispered, "No."

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, "Is anybody else there?"

"Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman."

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?"

"No, he's busy," whispered the child.

"Busy doing what?"

"Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman," the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard a loud noise in the background through The earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, "What is that noise?"

"A helicopter," answered the whispering voice.

"What is going on there?" demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive.

Again,whispering, the child answered, "The search team just landed a helicopter."

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?"

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle..."ME."

Chinese Sonogram - A little humor as the sun comes out

I found this image on the internet which gives adoptive parents a sonogram. Even though you are not really pregnant you still have the IA rollercoaster to ride and in some respects I think things would be easier to deal with if my wife was pregnant. Alos on a positive note, the sun is shining and the temperature is rising. Basically a great day!!

Spring storm takes out the lights

Well I missed a post, but have a perfectly reasonable explanation.

It is really hard to post when you don't have any electricity.

So no lights, heat, water, or anything else.

The power went off Sunday night and is still off and the house was down to about 55 degrees this morning. So I fired up the propane heater and heated water for a sponge bath before going to work. The best part is that it looks like it will be a couple of days before the power comes back on.

WOW - We went home for lunch and the power was back on. We both took showers and feel mostly human again.

There are many people in Rutland County who could be without power for days so I feel very fortunate.

Friday the 13th and it is still snowing

Well it is Friday the 13th and the snow and gloom are still hanging over our heads.

Nothing new on the adoption front, other than a rumor that if you pull your application for any reason from China you will forever be banned from applying again. Personally I hope a huge number of people do pull their applications so I can get closer to the front of the line.

I know, very selfish of me but that's life.

Personally I can't see many people sticking it out when they thought that they would have a 1 year max wait and the wait time is rapidly approaching 2 years. IMHO People are going to jump ship to other programs with the illusion that their adoption will happen quicker. Then that program will slow down because of the number of applicants. Then they move to another program, and the cycle continues... If people do this the rest of us will benefit, and not complain about the decrease in wait time.

Hopefully after the weekend it will warm up and the sun will once again show it's face in the sky.

Then I can get back to work on the addition and spring cleanup.

Boy today sucks!!

I am sitting at work listening to Fleetwood Mac and trying to deal with work pressures and deadlines.

Tons of things that need to be finished and no one will answer the questions required to complete anything. Add to that the doom and gloom flying aroung the IA world and I am having a very hard time concentrating on anything.

I am trying to write SQL and all I can think about is our adoption and the wait for referral.

Things flying through my head include....

Will the wait continue to extend?

How many more years will we have to wait?

Will China close the country to IA?

Will we be disqualified because of Tammy's BMI?

Will we be denied during review because of some other factor?

When will our application even hit the review room?

I promised myself that I would stay out of the rumor mill, but when China changed its requirements after May 1, 2007 I started getting nervous. Now I can't stop myself because I am waiting for them to say that they are now going to apply the new rules to the backlog.

Maybe not rational on my thought, but not getting a referral scares the shit out of me. We have tried for so long to have a child that there are times when you begin to believe you are never going to have a child.

Add to that the fact that over the last couple of weeks with being around family for the holidays you see all of your nieces and nephews and think about what it would be like without raising a child. Also, everyone in our families can't understand why the wait is so long and the most common questions are about how much longer do we have to wait.

I also have to confess that my grandparents are getting up in years, and both of them are showing their years. Not only does it concern you that they may never meet this child that they know we are tryign to adopt, but it weighs on my mind that they might not see another Christmas. There has been such a drastic downturn over the last 6 months, especially for my grandfather.

Probably some of it is cabin fever, and Mother Nature isn't helping things because it is 15 degrees colder than it should be and it is a mixture of sleet, snow, rain, and freezing rain outside.

It is that time of year when you should be able to get outside and clean up from winter, but winter just won't go away. Now the snow will have to melt a second time and we can go through mud season again, oh Joy..

I can handle alot of stress, pressure, and anxiety but today I could almost scream/cry over it all. I am ready to be done with winter and move on to spring so the flowers can start to bloom and things won't be cold, damp, and white.

There is always something about spring which recharges me.

Hopefully we will see spring flowers soon.

A post every day..

I have made a promise to myself that I would try to add a post every day during the rest of the wait for our referral. That had been easy until today when I am reading posts about the expected wait time going to 3 years and am more than a little bummed today. In my heart I do not believe that it will get this extreme, but it is also very easy to fall into the pack and believe all of the speculation.

My belief is that once we get through the end of '05 things will be better as the months in '06 seem to have fewer people waiting in them. I am also holding out hope that more babies will be made available because I believe that China wants it's program to "fly under the radar".

Too many people complaining about the wait time brings them into the spotlight just as quickly as sending too many babies out of the country. So I have hope that we will see the wait extend a little more, and then settle back into a more even pattern.

Does this mean the wait will drop back to 9 months?

No, but hopefully it will stabilize at 20 - 24 months.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have something to write other than another complaint about having to wait for so long.

Fun Facts about China

Ice cream was invented in China around 2000BC when the Chinese packed a soft milk and rice mixture in the snow.

China is the fourth largest country in the world.

China is sometimes a day ahead of the United States.

The Chinese year is based on the cycles of the moon. This is called a lunar schedule. A complete cycle of the Chinese calendar takes 60 years. The Chinese calendar dates back to 2600 B.C. It is the oldest known calendar.

Each year is represented by an animal. There are twelve animals which represent the twelve months.

When a Chinese child loses a baby tooth, it doesn't get tucked under the pillow for the tooth fairy. If the child loses an upper tooth, the child's parents plant the tooth in the ground, so the new tooth will grow in straight and healthy. Parents toss a lost bottom tooth up to the rooftops, so that the new tooth will grow upwards , too.

It is considered good luck for the gate to a house to face south.

We know that the Chinese grew rice as long as 5000 BC Archaeologists have found rice grains in farming tools and pots from that period.

Long ago, silk making was a closely guarded secret. Anyone who gave the secret away could be killed.

The Great Wall is so large that astronauts have seen it from the moon!

At one time, Chinese patriots hoped to rid themselves of hated foreign conquerors. To announce the time of an uprising, the patriots hid messages in moon cakes.

Red is considered a lucky color in China. At one time wedding dresses were red. New Year's banners, clothing, and lucky money envelopes are still red.

Fourth graders are expected to know 2,000 of the over 40,000 written Chinese characters. By the time they leave college, they will know 4,000 or 5,000 characters. Each character is learned by looking at it and memorizing it.

Unlike the 26 letters of our alphabet, words cannot be sounded out letter by letter.

Delays not of our making...

So it is almost 7 months since we had our LID and with the huge delays I am looking back on the entire process of getting to our LID. There are many things which I regret that I did not push to happen faster but at the time everyone was saying 9 months to referral so it did not seem like a big deal. Now that we are looking at a 20 month wait those same things are an irritant because it means even more months added on to our wait.

The delays started with the first visit to our local social worker. We walked through the door and had our first appointment and handed her all of the info that we knew was required and she says "Wow, usually I spend the first session explaining to my clients what they need to do and the documents they have to have for my home study."

The rest of the session was really a waste because we had already had everythign that she needed sitting in front of her so she proceeded to ask us questions covered in the questionare that she had sent us and we had already filled out.

Then we had to wait for our next appointments because she was soooo busy.

Finally we had all of our appointments taken care of, and she told us she would get us our home study by Friday. Well Friday came and went, and then the next Friday came and went.

And so on....

Finally after several weeks and multiple e-mails and phone calls the draft of the home study arrives. Several things are incorrect so I make changes and send it back for her to finalize the document.

And then we waited....

She returns it to me with none of the changes done. So I once again send her the corrections.

And then we waited...

Finally we got the final home study and we finished authenticating\certifying the document.

Then we waited for our LID of September 12, 2006.

The total of this time (not of our making) is probably 3 months.

Factor this by the current delay in processing referrals and this equates to over 6 months added wait time that we would not have had if certain steps in the paperchase were handled more efficiently by our social worker.

Next time (if there is a next time) she will find that I will not be likely to give any slack in getting things done.

Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.

Why China??

This really starts with the question - "Why not a domestic adoption?"

This is easily answered after a discussion of "Open" adoptions, adoptive parents rights, and health issues in domestic adoptions. Basically we just couldn't stomach all of the issues and after talking with other people who have gone through the process domestically we just did not feel good about going that way.

Then along comes our friends Kalvin and Pam who had completed an adoption for their first daughter using CCAI. Their experience started us down the path to China, and then after doing more research found that it had everything we were looking for in an adoption.

The babies are healthy and were wanted by their parents, but because of being a girl and China's strict family planning program they are abandoned because the parents are looking for a son. This contrasts to children who are available for adoption in the US because many of them are suffering from the effects of their parents drug and alcohol abuse. So with a China adoption we could get a little girl who has health problems, but the chance is actually less than if we adopted in the US.

The babies from China are abandoned. Babies in the US are put up for adoption and if parents rights are not terminated correctly they can come back years later and demand their child back. Combine this with "Open" adoptions where birth parents and adoptive parents get together at adoption agency functions and we just couldn't do it.

The child that we adopt is ours, and will be treated as if we had given birth to her. She will have everything we are able to give to her/do for her. We will be her "forever family", and we take that responsibility very seriously.

There are also a deep respect for China and her people which helped move us toward an adoption from China.

All of these things combined with the positive experiences of our friends, and spending time interacting with their daughters made our decision for us. All that waqs left was filling out the piles of paperwork, raising the money, and waiting.

Even though the wait has extended I still feel we have made the right decision.

Another holiday down, many more to go...

Another weekend that included a family holiday, and the usual questions were asked...

"When exactly are you finishing the adoption?"

and a new one..

"Why are you adopting from China?"

So we explained everything once again, but it was probably the hardest time I have done this because I was a little pessimistic after what has been floating around about the lack of days of referrals this month. Everyone means well, but if you are not personally strapped onto the rollercoaster you just can't understand why there are thousands of orphans yet there are not enough to refer more than 2 days worth of LID's (which means at least another 12 months for a referral).

For that matter I am on the rollercoaster and I don't understand it, way too many variables but at least I understand the overview. You just have to try and stay positive and wait to find your child.

Nothing I say or do will make anything go faster, and I thing that is one of the hardest things about the wait. The other is the fact that you really have no information to help you cope with the wait or predict how long it will be.

We also answered the second question by explaining open adoptions and health / mental problems in domestic adoptions. Everyone immediately understood that one, and when it was explained agreed that they could not cope with a domestic adoption.

So now we go back to waiting.

Hopefully the next batch of referrals witll be a little bit more substantial, and thankfully it is a while before the next family gathering. Maybe by then we will have something a little bit more positive to tell them.

Are you looking for a pony?

From one of the adoption sites I frequent....

"Two boys who were twins, one an incurable optimist, one a pessimist. The parents were worried about the extremes of behavior and attitude and finally took the boys in to see a psychologist. The psychologist observed them a while and then said that they could be easily helped. He said that they had a room filled with all the toys a boy could want. They would put the pessimist in that room and allow him to enjoy life. They also had another room that they filled with horse manure. They put the optimist in that room. They observed both boys through one way mirrors. The pessimist continued to be a pessimist, stating that he had no one to play with. They went to look in on the optimist, and were astounded to find him digging through the manure. The psychologist ran into the room and asked what on earth the boy was doing. He replied that with all that manure, he was sure there had to be a pony in the room somewhere."

Are you looking for a pony?

Things are not looking good for this months referrals

All of the speculation about referrals is saying that the current batch that is coming will not even hit the end of October 2005. This is really depressing because if they can't even get to November this time it will take FOREVER to actually get through November when they reach it.

So if this is true how many months will it add onto the current 17 month wait time?

Who knows, but it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I keep telling myself that after November and December of 2005 are referred things should go a little faster. That is easy to say, but is not always easy for your brain to communicate to your gut.

So we will wait and see what the actual cut off date is for the referrals, and pray...

A little over a year

It is hard to believe that it has been a little over a year since we were oficially accepted as a client by CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International). As we were working on completing our adoption paperwork we were told many times that the wait would be 9-12 months.

At the time I was convinced that the 9 month number was not correct, but never would have dreamed that the wait would have grown to 16 - 24 months (some people speculate longer waits than that). That delay added to the delays by our Social Worker in preparing our home study means that it will probably be at least another year before we see a referal. Since we have been waiting so long already trying to get pregnant the delay doesn't bother me as much as the lack of information.

Basically we have heard almost nothing since our LID in September, and speculation is running rampant about just how far out the delay will extend. My hope at this point is that the wait will finally stabilize after November '05 referrals are finally gotten out. Over the last week I have been watching for exactly what the cutoff is for referrals in the current batch because this will be an indicator of how long it will take to get throught the end of October and Novemeber which have a huge number of applications logged.

At times I have wondered what it will feel like when we hit this time next year and we still have not gotten a referral. I guess that I can only keep moving forward finishing the nursury and saving money for the adoption trip. I will also feel better about the whole ordeal when we know we are out of the review room which is the next big step forward.

Start of an Adoption Diary

I decided today to set up this blog to record our journey in International Adoption. Hopefully at some time in the future our little girl will be able to look at what I have written and know more of our journey to find her. The pain, uncertainty, and joy that we felt while trying to find her and add her to our family.