I just had to say it, didn't I?


Do you know when things are bad and you stupidly say, well, now I know that things can only get better from now on? That is totally inviting the universe to show you just how many things you cannot control. We have happily enjoyed our late log in date and that status for one day when we get the "Friday China program update" on our email. In this email they tell us that things have REALLY slowed down. So when we started the process, it was 6 months to referral. When the paperwork went in, they said 8-10 months when we sent things in in January. When we sent things off to China, they advised it could be 12-18 months and now after the log in date, we have been told 18-24 months. Yes, that is 2 years from now. So if you do the math, that would mean around May of 2008, we could get a referral for a child. And probably travel in the early summer. Although, that is when the Beijing Olympics are, so they would probably slow things down for that, so.... it may a very long while until this actually occurs.

Wow, this blog supposed to be a humorous narrative of the whole process but has been a real downer as of late. Sorry about that. I guess it just speaks to the roller coaster process where you hear good things one day, and the next something else is going on. Ugh.

On the positive side, this now means that I have 2 years to do all sorts of random things before we need to get ready, and I will be unemployed- because I took a leave of absence thinking we'd be leaving this time next year.... so now I have this huge open space and I need to decide what to do to fill it. What would you do if you could take an entire year off and do whatever you wanted? Go back to school, volunteer, get a new job, or would you ask for your old job back? I am really unsure as to what I want to do! I think I may spend the summer looking around seeing what my options are and not come up with anything until the fall. My fall back plan is substitute teaching, which while it will give me a chance to see my old friends and students, gets old, because you can only show the same movie 6 times in a row every day, or get stuck with the unruly classes with no real consequences so many times.

Short term goal is training for this triathlon in August. I'll probably spend the summer taking more swimming lessons, training sessions, bike rides, and go from there. Maybe I'll dedicate my life to doing ironman triathlons all over the world. Or, I could become a barista at Starbucks. I just don't know!
:)

Logged in..... FINALLY!!!


Well after all of the drama of the last week, we have found out our log-in-date: May 17th. Chris did some following up with the person from WACAP who personally tracked down the missing package in China. He said that at the CCAA, he tried to ask to talk with the director to change the date to reflect when it was actually sent, but he wasn't there so no dice. I guess they (the CCAA) feel that it wasn't their fault so they don't need to be the ones to fix it. Chris asked him to try again and so we'll see what happens.

The one thing we'd really like to see change, is the method in which packages are sent from the agency over seas. They use regular U.S. Mail. We thought that paying extra to have the agency prepare the dossier meant that it would be Fed-Exed or something. At least they paid extra to have a tracking number to find out where it ended up. They say that they hadn't ever lost a package before, but now they have, I would like to see the methods they like to use to send things out include delivery into the intended recipient's hands....

So we are now, really, officially 1 week into the wait.

Bad news from China...


We got a call from the adoption agency saying that our dossier got lost on the way to China because the label fell off and they had to send someone to China to track it down. The person located the package (that contained 8 other families' (( I have no idea how to punctuate the plural possessive of families and am too mad to look it up)) dossiers) in the Beijing post office. And so the adoption agency rep hand carries it to CCAA. And so this means that instead of logging things in during the first week of April, it may now not be logged in until the end of May, end of June. So that could mean an extra 2-6 months on our wait. Perfect. Just great. I think I'm in shock and also pretty angry. Chris is planning on calling China to talk with someone. That should work out pretty well, they are pretty reasonable, right?

Submitting the dossier was a really big deal for me. I had impatiently waited for them to send it off to China every day after we submitted it and I told all my students about it, and celebrated by bringing them treats. And knowing that we are now not 2 months into a 12 month wait, but 2 months into a 14-18 month wait makes me feel realy helpless.

I need to find some hobbies for next year..... soon!

The Brown Envelope Arrives!


So we received the elusive brown envelope, and I call it that because only half of all China adoptive families receive it for some reason. This usually shows up sometime after a file is received (and logged in? Hello, we're waiting to find out already...) in the CCAA office. We received it yesterday and we know that there is a case number, and it contains all the paperwork we'll need in China. Stuff for the medical exam, actual in-country adoption procedure etc. It is from the US consulate in Guangzhou. I really don't know what to make of it, but hey, at this point anything is good news.

So Why China?


We get this question a lot, so I thought I'd address it here. Chris and I have been married for almost 10 years, and a couple years after we married we talked about adopting. I was the one who did a bit of research and started planning for it. There were a few reasons that we thought about adoption and specifically China. I am a Bio teacher and I spent time learning about zero population growth and the carrying capacity of the Earth, etc. and I liked the idea of adopting kids that were already here. I also liked the idea of giving a girl different opportunities in a place where her status as a woman would not be a limiting factor. Infants from China are generally very healthy and are well taken care of before adoption. After we thought about these things and then watched the National Geographic special "China's Lost Girls" we decided to one day do it.

I went to a meeting at WACAP in August of 04 and learned about some of the different programs. China has been a very predictable process (at least until recently!) and we liked the idea of a year long time frame. 6 months for paper work - known as the paperchase- and another 6 months before referral. We had to wait until I turned 30 in January of 06 before we could turn in the paperwork and at this time, the wait for referral has slid to 11months and climbing.

We understood that some people will ask about the effects of this choice on our future daughter. Some adoptees resent being taken from their own country and put into a transracial family. We know we are the third best possible parents, behind Chinese parents from China, parents of Chinese descent in another country, and then us. We have gone to a couple of classes with our adoption agency that gave us some resources, and we are currently looking into Families with Children from China- FCC - Seattle. We are learning all about China, have begun to incorporate some Chinese customs into our family and will encourage our daughter to learn about her background. There is a delicate balance between pushing her too hard and really making her feel like she is different from her family or pretending that she isn't adopted and it is something we never talk about. We'll be very supportive with this integration into our family and let her take the lead with language lessons, cultural events, whatever else we find that she enjoys.

We sometimes get the question, why not from the US? Aren't there plenty of children here who need homes? Well there might be. We didn't investigate domestic adoptions very thoroughly. The idea of private adoption was a bit scary for us, because a birth mother can always change her mind at the last minute. Also, the process of going through the government seems to have a much longer waiting time. We wanted to adopt an infant and at this time we weren't considering an older child- which is a shorter wait in the US. So, we may look into doing this in the future, but not this time around. I think when people ask why not from the US, it can come across to adoptive parents as a bit of an accusation. And I know people don't mean to say it that way, but it would be like walking up to a pregnant woman and asking her why she didn't adopt from the US. People make the choices that fit their families best and this one is right for us!

Air Mail to China

We are waiting to hear when our dossier was logged in (LID). This is when the official clock starts. We know that it has been received sometime last month. We were DTC (dossier to China) on 3/31. Log in is usually a couple of week afterwards. This is a picture of the woman who works with us and our paperwork for the agency. This huge document held our medical and financial documentation as well as our autobiographies, pictures and letters of recommendation from our friends. It was all signed off on by a social worker who thinks we'll make pretty good parents of an infant. Woo hoo.