Data driven decision making....

Here is a great chart put together by Rumor Queen (THE authority on Chinese adoptions) that shows how the wait increased. Referral date is when the notification went out to the families - with a picture and health information which leads to acceptance of the child, then travel to China 2 months later.

LID cutoff means that for the referrals- this is the log in date cut off for the paperwork. So those families that got the referral were logged in by this date.

Min/Max wait- is the maximum wait the families waited after the paperwork was logged in there is a min and max wait because sometimes parents didn't get their referral right away

Days between referrals- this is how long the CCAA went between sending out referrals. They don't have a regular cycle, and events like Chinese New Years, Moon festival, ahem, Beijing Olympics can influence how long it is between referrals being sent out.

The days of LIDs is what the Chinese adoption community looks at... We all know how far away our LIDs are in, (for team Anderson, it is 161 days)... so each time we hear referrals are sent out, we anxiously await to see how many LIDs they got through.... this last time it was only 6 days, so that means that we moved 6 days closer to the finish line (and this time took us 33 days of waiting)....look back at the LIDs and the referrals.... can you even imagine how frustrating it is to wait an entire month to see that they only did 2 days of referrals? So this is why a simple calculation of how long it will take is impossible. The rate keeps changing, so that always changes the projection. If we go at a rate of 6 days referred every month or so... then it would be 27 more months for us to wait. But if it went to 3 days, then up to 52 months- but it could also speed up... like it used to be a month at a time- so then that would be only 5 months.

The more you know (cue the NBC chimes...)