Looking back, and a little ahead

Last night I was looking back at our previous posts on this blog, and contemplating how optimistic we were. Of course, that was before the referral slowdown really hit with full force, before the scandal in Hunan Province, and before the slowly grinding siege type mentality took over. Buying our first baby items, beginning to make plans for a nursery, it all seems so long ago now. We have slowly collected many things for Miaya, and have become accustomed to seeing them sitting there -- still unused. The crib is still unassembled, the nursery only partially done, it would be more difficult to see the room ready but empty. In the months since we bought those first baby things (and we were nervous for our social worker to see them), we have wandered through the baby section in many stores, occasionally picking up something on sale or clearance. Though always with a kind of "hopeful sadness" in our hearts.

Don't get me wrong, we're still optimistic, and the adoption WILL happen, but when the target keeps moving, it does get discouraging at times. We get an update called "Places Everyone" from our agency, Great Wall China Adoptions, after every referral batch is issued which shows where everyone's LID date stands in relation to the last batch, and what stage they are in, Translation, Pending Review, Review, or Pending Referral. It only shows the dates documents were mailed to China, and the dates they were logged in, not names of applicants.

We have slowly moved up the list, and now have 5 mailing dates resulting in 4 LID dates ahead of us, we are definitely closer. (Great Wall mails application dossiers to China every friday.) This puts us in the sixth slot, and it's very possible we may be four to six months away from getting the referral if the process remains the same. Supposedly, after November '05 clears, the number of applications drops considerably into early 2006. If the number of children becoming available remains about the same, then our hoped for day may come sooner.

Travel Goodies!

Thanks to our Travel Buddies for the latest round of travel goodies! We recently received a package with Disposable Bibs, Baby Einstein baby toys, and a really neat travel formula dispenser. (Kim babysat for one of her colleagues a few months ago, and she had one of the formula containers and Kim thought it was very neat.)

Can We All Say TWENTY?

Here we are on the brink of twenty months since LID, and the ever moving target of our referral is still moving. Most of this year has gone to clearing the applications from October and November of 2005, and 5 days remain to be covered from November '05. Supposedly, December and January were much lighter in the number of applications, so, process may speed up some. Assuming that there are enough paper ready children to keep the process moving.

We have also passed the two year mark since we were accepted by our adoption agency to apply to China. So many milestones, and still we have empty arms. We will be getting fingerprinted this week as part of renewing our I-171H at the Citizenshp and Immigration Service, which is our proof of being pre-approved to bring a foreign born orphan into the Unites States. Our first document was good for 18 months, and expired in May.

To renew, we had to dig out the birth and marriage certificates, get new criminal checks, have our homestudy updated, and new medical fitness letters from our doctor. The fingerprints should be the last hurdle in the renwal process, and as I don't remember being a menace to society lately, then it should go forward smoothly.

We still have faint hopes of getting our referral by Christmas, but those hopes have dimmed somewhat with the recent batch of referrals only covering 4 days, with the cutoff date being November 25, 2005.