A rather cryptic message from our agency to one of the other members in our group:

"I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you heard tomorrow."

Heard what? I don't know...but I'm choosing to remain positive!

Rumors...

"All of September will be included with the next batch."
"The cut-off date will be September 7th."
"People with mid-September LID's are being told they will not be included in the next batch of referrals."

And my personal favorite...

"An agency has told their clients that referrals have been mailed and should be here Thursday."

Even if they do only get to September 7th, we're still included in there with an LID of September 5th. Oh...dare I dream that I will be looking at my precious daughter's face by the end of this week?

I CAN'T BREATHE!!!!!

More disjointed ramblings from a waiting parent...

I am beyond insane...simply beyond it...and not in a GOOD way! On a happy, well, maybe not...maybe INTERESTING note, the last referral cutoff was August 9th, 2005. That was the date that our dossier was sent to China.

I have come to rely on the rumors now. Whereas before I found them irritating, now as we get closer and closer I find them NECESSARY to get through the day. The latest are certainly interesting. Supposedly referrals are coming out next week and the cutoff will be August 23-24, 2005. Remember our first LID? AUGUST 25, 2005. There is also a new one saying that all of us with messed up LID's will be taken in the order that our files were RECEIVED and not logged in. Hey, it's a long shot but at least it's positive. Either way I'd like to think that if we aren't included in this batch that they could include BOTH of our LID's in next month's group.

We are more than ready to be finished, done, completed, through etc. with THE AGENCY. I don't want to go into a long diatribe about this agency...there are many, MANY satisfied current and former clients... but after almost two years in the program this time, we've just seen, heard, and witnessed too many things that shouldn't be going on. First and foremost is the "cloak and dagger" attitude. Client "A" calls agency Contact "1", asks a question, gets a response. Client "B" calls agency Contact "2", asks the same question, gets a DIFFERENT response. Client "C" calls agency Contact "3", asks the same question, gets yet another response. Client "A" calls agency Contact "1" again to find out what's going on and is told yet a fourth different response. You get the idea...and it usually all happens within the same day. Other agencies post helpful hints on the wait etc. on their websites...they post any information they have about when referrals are coming/updates on the wait etc. We get the "It's a secret and don't tell anyone I told you..." treatment. No, wait, to be fair, that was what we got when we were waiting for Hope. This time it's all been, "Don't get your hopes up. Don't believe the rumors." And my personal favorite for which I may just go postal, "Once you have that baby in your arms all of this will be forgotten!" Ummm...right...you really do think I'm *that* stupid.

It looks like our Holy Grail I171-H is going to expire before we have our consulate appointment in Guangzhou. So here we go again! Dena, our social worker is updating our homestudy. Garry filled out another I600-A last night and wrote the check. We need certified copies of our birth certificates (again) and our marriage certificate (again). Total cost to re-do this stuff...around $700. Again, I am beyond insane. I'm not even nice anymore...if I ever was to begin with!

Our family recently came through a real test. Our lives were filled with anger, sadness, and fear. God brought us out of it with peace and light and hope. I know if I can just put this STUFF with the agency in proper perspective, He will certainly bring us through this as well. I also know that I want my baby.

Baby number one is an amazing creature. She started preschool last month with a flourish. I cried of course. Daddy had an upset stomach. Hopie ran off into her classroom without so much as a wave over her shoulder! LOL She can't wait to get there, she loves her teachers, she talks about all of the children every day...and this week the bottom has completely fallen out. On Tuesday she screamed bloody murder that she wasn't going and I barely got her there. Today was better but she tizzed out once we got there. I'll be darned if I know what's going on. I've talked to her teacher...and Garry and I have both talked to Hopie. We're at a loss right now to help our precious angel. The only thing Garry and I can think of is she went absolutely, completely insane last October too. Maybe it's cyclical for her! Let's just pray that Claire's month to go nuts is different from her sister's!

Oh! My weight! You remember I was hoping to lose 10 pounds before Hope started school. I didn't, but I was halfway there! I continue to work on it and am doing well. My clothes already look and FEEL a lot better. Still nothing drastic...I'm aiming to get to the low 130's and maintain. Garry is going great guns! He weighed himself this morning and has lost 11 pounds! Does my husband rock or what? ")

Claire's room looks like it is ready for her! (Just don't open the closet!) It gets cleaned just like the other rooms do now but I can't bear to go in there to organize clothes or toys yet...not until I know what her little face looks like.

And so that's where we are! Don't get me wrong, we have more positive up days than not...today is just a very down day. God will do what He does best and I just have to let Him do it!

Blessings y'all!

Nothing new to report, other than CCAA is finished reviewing those dossiers they received in November 2005.

I've been letting a few of these little tidbits of info pile up and I thought I'd post them and get them out of my overflowing Inbox. All information comes from Dr. Jane Liedtke's "Ask Jane In China" Yahoo group.

First off, just a point of interest...the difference between provinces, and municipalities:

"There are four municipalities in China (very large cities) that are allowed to govern themselves just as a province (state) would. These 4 are: Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing and Shanghai. Provinces are like states. There are also special administrative regions (like Hong Kong), special economic zones (like Shenzhen), and autonomous regions (like Tibet) that are allowed to be governed separately in a similar fashion to a state/province."

Next, another interesting perspective from Dr. Liedtke. The question asked was, "Do you know how much of the home study the CCAA translates and do they actually read what is in the personal letter written by the prospective parents? As the age of children often appears to be different from the age requested I and my social worker were wondering about the translation of information."

"The entire home study is supposed to be translated and read. Now whether there are employees who do 100% of their job or if they are required/not required to read all of it is another question (they are government employees after all - no different than in any country in the world).

The age of child requested - often they will assign a child at the high end of the range requested versus the low end. The age is also dependent on travel groups. If a group of dossiers from one agency go to CCAA together as a bundle and the agency wishes to have everyone in the bundle travel to the same province then the CCAA is going to look to match the children they have from a given province with the group. Sometimes this means that a child could be older or younger than requested because the province has not submitted the children of the ages requested - ie, they aren't available at the time the group is processed so what children's files are sitting there in Beijing get processed.

While we'd like to think the match is intentional (reading the dossier and finding the perfect child to fit the dossier), there has to be some element of: here's a pile of dossiers and here's a pile of files on a worker's desk and within the day the matches are made. Therefore, if the ages requested aren't the same as the kids files sitting on the desk - guess what happens? The worker matches families anyway. I doubt they run around the office saying - "does anyone have a 6 month old I could use to match this family over here?"

And finally, someone asked is this slowdown is a result of the trend towards promoting domestic adoption in China.

"Domestic adoptions are encouraged through the new one-child policy that was instituted in Dec. 2004. However, the numbers (10,000 adoptions reported on the low end but they could be higher now) are not huge when compared to the population (1.26 billion persons) or compared to the number of births in China (1.7 million annually). CCAA is now responsible for all adoptions from the total of 1000 orphanages in China - both international and domestic (thus the slow-down - you have shifting offices, shifting employee roles, new employees, new procedures, getting a handle on domestic adoptions, promoting domestic adoptions, getting the 750 institutions that aren't international adoption-ready up to standards, etc etc etc). Add to all that the media focus on baby-trading in China and CCAA has it's hands full these days. It is highly responsible of CCAA to slow the process to be sure that they can get their staff up to speed and balance work loads, train new staff, and be ready for a larger volume of potential domestic adoptions. It doesn't mean they won't continue international adoptions, no way will they "shut down" that income stream. They are just adjusting their business for a larger scope and mission. We should all be thankful for their good work and increased attention to ALL the children who are institutionalized in China, not just those from 250 institutions allowed to adopt internationally."

Amen! I do so love her common sense and voice of reason amidst all of the horrible rumors...which I started reading again...I'm so weak! The latest is that the next batch of referrals will only include up to July 28th. Well, as I've taken to saying every single night when I get into the shower, "It doesn't matter. I'm still one more day closer to Claire."

Take care...more later.

UPDATE...RUMORS

Egads. There are so many of them out there and so many of them are RIDICULOUS! And of course most are followed by some bit of information saying that this HAS to be true because blah, blah, blah.

Just to share a few...

1) The September files have already been reviewed as well and are in The Matching Room.

2) CCAA is trying to slow things down so that you must wait a year from the time your file is logged in.

3) The next batch of referrals will come out in the next week or so and will still not include all of May.

4) The next batch of referrals will come out in the next week or so and will include the first part of June.

5) The number of dossiers received by CCAA in May of 2005, and also June of 2005, were three times more than what they usually receive. This is why things have slowed so drastically.

Ok, and this really isn't a rumor but just so you have some idea...when we were called and told that our LID was entered incorrectly Chris said that the folks at CCAA weren't really in a hurry to "get in there", meaning the computer system, and change the LID's on 1200 files. Now, I took that to mean that there were 600 files for August 25th, and 600 more for September 5th. In any case, that's 1200 people just for THOSE TWO DATES ALONE waiting for a baby from China. NOW do you see why it takes so long? ")