Up to August 15

The Chinese New Year festivities continue! Last night I treated my niece and nephew to a feast at the Mandarin. They had lots of special treats available to celebrate the new year and I think we tried them all!!!! D. especially enjoyed the desserts!! Is 4 plates of dessert ever a bad thing?? I'm not sure there were any left for the other customers!

Tonight I am off again to celebrate with the families in my town who have adopted from China. We meet at a local restaurant and have a good time. I will be inviting them to check out the blog too!

So referrals came out last week for LIDs up to August 15. It's so exciting to see all of the people reporting receiving their referral package and when I check out their blogs, the pictures are so adorable!!! The families are so over the moon when they send out their news.

Like I said previously, this is a very small batch of referrals however, it seems to me this is becoming the new norm. Every time I think I am a step closer, I fall two steps back. That being said, I am still 5 days closer to receiving my referral!!! There are now only 29 days left between this batch and my Log-in date (Sept 13). Even if they keep up this incredibly slow pace of 5 or 6 days worth of files a month, I am still looking at a late spring referral.

In the places I go on the internet to check out information, there is much talk about a gap in LIDs (Log-in dates) in August. Apparently there are no files (or very, very few files) logged into China for 10 days at the end of August. This is good news! It's good news because it means The Centre for Adoption Affairs in China has no choice but to process many days at once at some point. So I may soon see a great surprise jump in days referred. I will keep you posted on that! My friend and her husband are LID August 29, so they are getting extremely close, especially if they suddenly jump from the 19th to the 29th! If this post is not making sense to you, refer to one of my very first posts in January where I explained how the referral process works. My sister checks out Rumour Queen and has asked that I provide a little glossary of acronym terms and explanations as well. I'm working on that and will get it out soon.

PS. I am QUITE impressed with myself that I figured out how to put in pictures on my blog. You have no idea what an accomplishment that is for someone as computer stunned as me. And I didn't even need help from my nieces and nephews!

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! The year of the dragon, a powerful mythical creature that according to my research on the ever-so-reliable wikipedia represents an emperor and power in ancient China. Today, it is the ultimate symbol signifying success and happiness. May this year of the Dragon bring great success and happiness to you. I feel confident it will for me. I read in my zodiac horoscope that I will experience life-altering changes in the upcoming year. Whatever could they mean??? LOL!

I have been celebrating Chinese New Year in mildly entertaining ways over the past couple of days. Saturday afternoon I went to a local Asian restaurant with two friends for lunch. I gave the chopsticks the old college try but had to give up in order to finish my meal at the same time as my friends! Saturday night was my dad's birthday and he and my mom as well as my aunt and uncle came for dinner. A big feast of ribs to celebrate the big day for dad!

To celebrate New Year's eve Sunday night, I treated myself to Chinese take-out and practised my chopstick skills once again! From the amount of food that falls off I have a feeling I will be very hungry in China! Oh well, I will probably be too busy chasing a baby around to eat anything anyway. From what I've read on peoples' experiences who have been there, done that, people either love the food in China or detest it and can't wait to get back home to their own food. I consider myself a very adventurous eater so I hope I will fall into the "love" category.

As I close off the night, I think about my daughter, a baby girl whom I have never even met yet. I'm hoping she is part of a happy day, a feast, a party, celebrating with people who care about her. Happy New Year baby girl! This will be our last year apart I'm sure!

No Referrals yet...

Will referrals be sent out this week? It's already Thursday and no word yet on the next set of referrals. We usually hear from Europe first as they receive their referral calls sometimes a day before the rest of the world. The cut-off date seems pretty secure at August 15th. A little disappointing but sometimes China follows that with a great big batch the next month. I can only hope!!!! I'll be checking the Rumour Queen site several times today I'm sure!

I have friends whom I met at an adoption workshop back in the fall, who left for China on January 4 to meet their daughter. I keep wondering how they are doing and whether they are back yet. I am hoping everything went smoothly and as planned (I'm sure it didn't, whatever big life moments do?!) I will share some details of their adventure when I hear from them. I am sure they are exhausted and swamped with adjusting to a new baby in the house! Myself, of course, still working on those report cards!

Referrals Coming this Week?

Lots of activity on RQ (Rumour Queen) today about the next cut-off date being August 15. 5 days is 5 days but it is a very slow progression and only a handful of families. I am a little frustrated and disappointed with the 15th if it turns out to be true. It pushes my referral back more and more each time China falls short on the number of Log-in days they refer in a month. Oh well, it is what it is at this point so I guess I just need to stay positive. I'm still 5 days closer to buying that airplane ticket!!!! Now, back to report cards!

ok, I see the font size is the same so now I don't know what to do. Maybe if Kristin is reading, she can give me a suggestion??? She seems to know the whole social networking thing!

No Rumours yet

No real reason for this post except that I wanted to figure out how to make the font size larger for us old folks reading. I have been fooling around with the settings and I think I see how to do it but the only way to check is to post something, so here it is!

I checked Rumour Queen this morning and there are no rumours yet about the next cut-off date. I am getting anxious because I want to see referrals come out before Chinese New Year, which is this coming weekend. So far this year China has sent referrals out very regularly each month, which is a great improvement over the past few years. While they don't exactly come once a month (it happens more like every 30-35 days or so) I don't think they have skipped any months this year and sometimes they have surprised everyone and sent them out earlier than expected. Someone out there can correct me if I'm mistaken on the skipped month thing. The only rumour I have seen is for August 15, not a huge amount of days, only 5, but I'll take it, one more step closer!

My computer is not working well at all right now so I am heading off to school to work on reports. That means I actually have to get dressed today, ugh.

I now have 4 members to my blog, all family! Welcome and Yeah!

Thanks Ladies!

It's been a busy weekend with report card preparation and get togethers. Saturday afternoon I met with a group of women who are all single mothers. We chat on a yahoo group often and have regular get togethers. I have known some of them for several years now, since I started my own journey to motherhood, and we laughed yesterday about how we will need to have a big party when my referral finally happens. I met them when they had newborns and now their children are going off to school! How time flies! I also met with the China Waiting Mommies group last night for dinner. This is a group of women who have all adopted. It started out as mostly women adopting from China but has grown to include other countries as well. I have really gotten to know them well over the years and everyone is really excited that my referral is coming soon. There is one other woman in the group who has waited it out like me. Her Log-in date, or LID is August 29, so she and her husband expect their referral a couple of months before me. The two of us had fun last night chatting about how we will decorate the baby's room, what we need for travel and all the cute outfits there are for little girls. Dinner was great like usual and dessert was even better!!! These two groups have been a great support for me over the years as the wait stretched out to six times what it was supposed to be and I don't know where I would have been without them! Thanks Ladies! I gave everyone an invitation to my new blog, so hopefully they will be able to follow along too. I had found this great paper with paper lanterns on it, kind of Chinese looking and red envelopes. My big plan was to take my blog info to Staples and photocopy it for them on this great paper. Staples however, does not allow you photocopy on anything but their own paper so I ended up sticking a few stickers on plain white paper and giving it out that way. Sort of like the ones I handed out at Christmas that went on plain white paper as well!! I have good intentions of making it fancy, it just didn't work out that way! Ok, enough procrastinating, back to report cards!

Let the Rumours Begin!

I checked Rumour Queen this morning and she posted that China is "organizing paperwork and getting ready to match." Whoo-hoo! This is good news because it means referrals will be coming soon! Just before referrals happen, rumours abound about how many days will be referred and who will get "the call." Further to my previous post, each month China matches and refers several files from families around the world. It takes them sometimes several days to organize paperwork, several days to match the files and then usually within a day or two of matching, referrals are sent out to the various adoption agencies. This is the moment a family will "get the call" from their agency, meaning they have been matched to a child and will now receive information about that child. Sometimes it is a few days between when you get the call and when you receive pictures and information and from what I hear,this time in between is the slowest passing of time you can ever imagine!

Rumour Queen is a website, actually called www.chinaadopttalk.com where I get most of my information about referrals and a wide variety of adoption issues. Rumour Queen is the "name" of the woman who manages and writes the blog/site. She has two children who were born in China and she is a wealth of information for me. I check the site every day, sometimes more than once around referral time.

Ok, off to work now before I'm late! Just like China, I will be organizing paperwork this weekend as it is time to start writing report cards soon!

Happy New Year and back to work

Happy New Year to everyone! Oh dear, I haven't been very good at keeping my new year's resolution so far. A whole week has gone by and this is my first real post! Yikes! I promise I will try to post as often as I can. I wanted to take a moment to thank my nephew Matthew and his friend Kristin for helping me set up the blog. I probably never would have gotten to it if I hadn't forced them into helping me, so thanks guys! Sean was there too with a few words of wisdom from the sidelines!
For those that aren't familiar with how the China adoption process works, I will post in the next few weeks some information about that, but basically once my paperwork was approved and sent to China I received a log-in date, which for me was September 13, 2006. Yes, that's almost five and a half years of officially being in process so far. I've actually been waiting since February 2004. Because I was single, I waited an additional couple of years on a waiting list before I could even start the process, since China has a limit to the number of single women it will allow to adopt each year. So, patience has become my closest friend, you could say!
About once a month or so, China will process and send out referrals to waiting families. A referral means that they have matched a family's file with a child who is available to be adopted. Generally this is done chronologically, according to the date of log-in, and as of now, they have processed files that were logged in up to August 10, 2006. So that means, there are 21 days left in August plus 13 days in September to process before I receive my referral, 33 days in total. That doesn't seem like much to me (when I started there were well over 300 days ahead of me!) but unfortunately they only refer a few days worth of files each month, so 33 days could still take a while. More about this process at a later time.
They almost always send out referrals just before Chinese New Year as it is custom to clear away old work and start fresh in the new year, so it is expected that referrals will be sent out again in the next couple of weeks. It's an exciting time as everyone speculates on how far they will refer and who will finally get to see their child's face for the first time. So, as I head back to work this morning in our North American new year, I look forward to a fresh start with my students, and wait patiently for the next set of referrals, bringing me one step closer to meeting my daughter.

Starting the Journey in the Middle

Well, here it is, the start of my journey to motherhood. Well, sort of. The actual beginning started many years ago. It started in my heart as a dream. A dream of being a mom. So I began the journey by starting the adoption process. At first it was exciting and I dreamt every day about the new addition to my life. But the months of waiting turned into years of waiting and I wasn't able to start this blog because for several years after the beginning, there was really nothing to tell. Now here I am, finally nearing the end of this long journey. The beginning of the End. So begins my Red Thread Journey to Grace, not quite at the beginning, not yet at the end, but sort of in the middle.