We celebrated Christmas at my mom's house today and had a lot fun. One of the gifts I received from my mom was a Chinese doll named Olivia. That is why I titled this post coincidence or fate. I can't believe she found a doll who is Chinese and also named Olivia.
My mom also gave me this really cute t-shirt that describes the wait to anyone who asks.
Another Christmas has passed by without our daughter and this is the third Christmas since we decided to adopt from China that we are missing our daughter. With the wait times increasing I wonder if we will be celebrating yet a fourth Christmas without Olivia. Even though I do not know who she is or where she is in China, Olivia is our daughter and it is hard to celebrate this time of year without her. I am praying for a speed up in 2008.
October 2006 is through review! Congratulations to all of the October 2006 families who have been waiting for this day!
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before October 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before December 14, 2005.
Wow, it had been 20 months since our dossier has been logged in at the CCAA. This makes me wonder how much longer we will have to wait to see Olivia's face and hold her in our arms. I know I am praying for a speed-up in 2008.
I really hoped that this month we would finally see a speed up for referrals, but that is not the case. This month there were only 6 days of referrals.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before September 30, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before December 14, 2005.
There are still 113 days of LID's in front of us and I am now beginning to wonder if we will even get to see Olivia's face in 2008. This wait has been so long and difficult and it is not getting any easier.
Congratulations to all of the families who have received their referrals this month. I am living vicariously through you and holding onto hope.
The CCAA has updated their website and it appears like September 2006 has finally made it through the review room.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before September 30, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before December 8, 2005.
19 months!
I can't believe it has been 19 months since our LID. Time seems to go so quickly in some ways, but in other ways, the time is just dragging on while we wait to bring Olivia home. I hope that she knows, wherever she is, that she is already loved by her family here.
It's official....
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before August 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before December 8, 2005.
I am not really thrilled to see this in writing from the CCAA as I really hoped that they would refer farther into December.
Here we are in November already. According to RQ, referrals began arriving yesterday although agencies on the east coast probably won't receive them until Monday. The first cut-off rumors are December 8, 2005, which absolutely stinks. That means that we will still have 119 days of LID's ahead of us. That means we still have a really long wait ahead of us. I did the math and it doesn't look good for Olivia to be coming home anytime soon.
According to China Adoption Forecast....Our best guess - a weighted average of recent CCAA velocities, guessing that CCAA will perform about as well in the future as they are performing now, but might return to previous trends: 2008-12-09.
That's our best guess for when you might receive your referral. Just at a guess, we can suppose that the CCAA either speeds up or slows down significantly, and show you those dates. If they speed up: 2008-05-19. And if they slow down: 2010-01-09.
See what I mean about the long wait ahead of us...
Last night I dreamt that China really sped up and we received our referral for a little girl who had just turned 2 on October 10, 2007 (weird that I remembered the date). With the wait being so long we let our I171-H expire (which we really did), so we had to hurry up and renew it so we could bring Olivia home. Anyway, I never did see her face in my dream and we didn't make it to China before I woke up, so I don't know what happened after that.
Another month has passed and I have now reached my 18th month of our paper pregnancy. How much longer will this go on? Who knows and with the rate of referrals recently, I hope we don't have to wait another 18 months. But if that is what it takes to bring our daughter home, you will be seeing more posts like this one.
In other news....the CCAA updated their website this evening and it is official:
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before August 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 30, 2005.
All I can say to that news is....YUCK!
Today referrals began to arrive and it looks like the cut-off date is probably November 30th, 2005. This means that the CCAA only referred 3 days this month (really it was 5 days, but 2 of those days were weekend days). It has taken over 6 months for the CCAA to get through November 2005, so how long will it take them to get through the rest of 2005?
This news has discouraged me, but I am prepared to wait as long as it takes to bring Olivia home.
Congratulations to everyone who has received their referrals for their sons and daughters.
In September 2005 we made the decision to adopt our daughter from China. We filled out our agency application and then began our paperchase for documents for the dossier. We had our home study visits, background checks, and multiple fingerprinting appointments. In March 2006, after finally receiving all of our paperwork from our government and our social workers, we made the trip to Columbus to have everything authenticated by the state. Then, we paid a courier to take everything to the Chinese Consulate to have the papers authenticated by them. On March 23, 2006 our dossier was on it's way to China and on April 7, 2006 we were logged in to begin our wait for our daughter. At that time, our agency (along with everyone else) thought we would wait anywhere from 6-9 months to receive our referral for our daughter.
Now, here we are 17 months later, still waiting. I have had people ask me why we haven't given up on the China Adoption program and there is one simple answer...our daughter is in China. There is not an hour that goes by that I don't think of Olivia and there is never a night that I don't dream about her. How long will we wait...until we get to see her beautiful face. Yes, we are praying for sooner, rather than later, but we will wait as long as it takes to bring our daughter home.
Almost every Memorial and Labor Day we go camping with family. Typically it is very hot with not a lot of shade, so a couple of years ago we came up with a fun way to cool off and pass the time. We jokingly call this water balloon jousting...
The CCAA has updated their website and has referred through November 25, 2007. Of course, this only leaves 132 LID's ahead of us (how sad).
Here is what the CCAA website says:
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before June 30, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 25, 2005.
I read this on http://heartmindandseoul.typepad.com/weblog/ and wanted to share it. The blog owner is an international adoptee and also a parent of an internationally adopted child. If you get a chance, check out her blog as she great information that every adoptive parent should know.
They say...
They say I was just a baby, what possibly could I know?
They say I was just a baby, what possibly could I feel?
They say I was just a baby, what possibly could I remember?
They say I was just a baby, how much would I really lose?
They say I was just a baby, and that I wouldn't really notice.
They say I was just a baby, and that I wouldn't really care.
They say I was just a baby, and that it wouldn't really matter.
They say I was just a baby, and that she could be replaced.
They say I was just a baby, and that I wouldn't crave her touch.
They say I was just a baby, and that I wouldn't miss her love.
They say I was just a baby, and that time will heal all wounds.
They say I was just a baby, and that I'd never know any different.
They say I was just a baby, and that life would go on as planned.
They say I was just a baby, and that the pain could be loved away.
They say I was just a baby, and that I'd never feel as if I'd ever lost her.
Copied with the owner's permission.
We just returned from a wonderful, relaxing vacation in Mexico and I realized that I had not updated our blog for our 16-month LID anniversary (August 7). Actually, the date passed while we were relaxing away and I didn't even think about it until we got home. However, not a day went by that I didn't think about Olivia and continue to wait for her to come home to her forever family.
Well, the rumor was true and the cut-off date is November 21, 2005.
Directly from the CCAA website:
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before June 30, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 21, 2005.
Congratulations to all of the families who received their referrals!
I came home from work today and heard that referrals are arriving! Supposedly the cut-off date is November 21, 2005 which means that there are now only 136 days of log in dates in front of us. Even though that is a lot of days, at least now there are less.
I get excited every time the CCAA updates their website. Well, sometime last night they updated the document processing to state that through June 30, 2006 was through review. Congratulations to everyone with a June 06 LID on making it through the review room!
I read this on http://wraithswrealm.com/blog/2007/02/11/recommendations-for-adoptive-parents-revisited/ and wanted to share it...
Please read this amazing essay written by an 8th grade girl adopted from Vietnam.
http://kadnexus.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/my-sisters-adoption-essay/
I read this on one of my yahoo groups and wanted to share it.
Have you ever noticed that you hear all the time about "accidental" pregnancies, but never about couples who experience "accidental"adoptions?
Can you imagine:
Honey, sit down. I have some news for you.
What is it?
Well, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out with it. I went out to the mailbox today and ... well, we got an I-171H.
A what?!? An I171H? As in, we're going to have another baby?!?
It looks that way.
But how? We've been so careful! I put away all the blank I600A forms. Didn't you hide our home study update?
Of course I did. But don't forget, there was that one night...
What night? (pauses) Ohhh, that night. But it was only once. We were just messing around. I didn't print clearly. I didn't even use ink! (pauses again) But it was kind of fun.
(giggles) It was, wasn't it? I'll never forget how cute you looked getting your fingerprints.
So now we've got our I-171H, eh? But that doesn't always mean you'll adopt, does it? I mean, shouldn't you see the agency or something, make sure everything's okay?
I already did.
And?
I'm five documents along.
Five documents! And they're all notarized, certified and authenticated okay?
Just great. There was one small scare when the agency couldn't seethe notary's middle initial, but it showed up just fine under the magnifying glass.
Thank God. And you, honey? Are you feeling okay?
I'm feeling fine. As long as I know you're happy about this.
Happy? I'm thrilled! It's always a shock at first when something like this happens, but of course I'm happy!
I found this link on the RQ forum and thought I would share it with everyone. The link will allow you to click on any Province in China and learn more about the area.
http://easia.imb.org/peopleplaces/province.htm
This will be neat to have once we figure out what part of China Olivia is coming from.
Today is our 15 month anniversary for our LID. If I believed some of the agencies out there, I would think that I only had 3 more months to wait. I wish...
It's official...the CCAA has referred children to families who have LID's through November 14, 2005.
Directly from the CCAA website...
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before May 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 14, 2005.
What this means to us is that there are 143 days of LID's before they get to us. I am really hoping, although not holding my breath, that the CCAA speeds up referrals.
I happy to announce that May has made it through the review room. This is important to us because our friends Dan and Anita have a May LID. It took almost 4 months for April to make it through the review and only 2 weeks for May to get through. Maybe this means a speed up for referrals will be coming soon.
On the rumor front for referrals the news is not great. According to some agencies the CCAA has only referred families with LID's through November 14, 2005. This is only 6 measly days of referrals. I am praying that the wait speeds up and we do not have to wait another year to see our daughters face.
Directly from the CCAA website:
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before May 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 7, 2005.
I checked the CCAA website and we are officially out of review. Now...let's bring Olivia home!
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before April 30, 2006.
Fourteen months ago the CCAA received our dossier and logged it in. Today, according to their website, we are still not even out of review. At the rate that everything is going I am now beginning to wonder if we are ever going to see our daughter.
I made a trip to Toy's R Us today to buy birthday gifts for Cole, Katie and Reese. Of course I had to buy something for Olivia while I was there. As I was walking through the infant section I saw a John Deere rattle that had a tractor on it with a cute pink teddy bear riding in it. Since J is such a huge John Deere fan I had to buy it, even if Olivia will probably not use it.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 7, 2005.
Last night I had a dream that the CCAA updated their website and it said that referrals were completed through April 1, 2006. Unfortunately, it was only a dream and reality kicked in today.
According to the various Yahoo groups and of course, the Rumor Queen, referrals have been arriving today. Without verification from the CCAA website, it looks as though they have referred through November 7, 2005. That is only six days of log-in-dates.
What this means to us is that there are 150 more log-in-days before the CCAA gets to us. If they continue to only refer 6 days a month we are looking at another 25 months wait. Isn't that depressing? If they begin to refer at least 10 days per month, we will still have another 15 months wait. If they refer at least 15 days per month, we will still have another 10 months to wait. I know that now everyone understands the frustration I feel when there are only 6 days of referrals completed for one month.
On a more positive note though, maybe when the CCAA updates their website to reflect the referral dates they will also indicate that April 2006 is finally out of the review room.
I hope we will have better news soon and we will finally see our daughter sometime in the next year.
The CCAA has finally returned from vacation and updated their website.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 1, 2005.
Unfortunately we are still not out of the review room. Maybe by next months referrals that hurdle will be over and we will see that wonderful information.
Today is our 13-month LID anniversary. I am hoping that we will not have to wait for 13 more months to meet our daughter.
Today is also Katie's and Reese's, my niece and nephew, 3rd birthday. Happy Birthday Katie girl and Reese cup! I love you both and can't wait until you get to meet your cousin Olivia. She is going to be so lucky to have wonderful cousins like you both and Cole.
According to the Rumor Queen and other message boards, referrals have arrived through November 1, 2005 . This is better than last month's 2 days of referrals, but there are still 156 days left before they get to us (April 7, 2006).
We still haven't heard if we have made it through the review room yet. According to some of the message boards, people who have LID's in April have been asked questions by the CCAA, but no one seems to know if April has made it through review.
Congratulations to all of the lucky families who received their referrals for their children today.
I am not sure where I first read this, but I wanted to share it. I cannot wait to begin to experience the wonders of being a parent.
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 to be $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition, but this is the first time I have seen the rewards listed this way. It's nice..... But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice is "if you want to be 'rich', don't have children. Actually, it is just the opposite! What do you get for your $160,140?
For $16 0,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:
You have an excuse to:
You also get to:
and collect:
For $160,140, there is no bigger bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for:
You get a front row seat to history to witness history:
You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs called grandchildren and great grandchildren in your obituary. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God.
You have the power to:
It was true, the CCAA only completed referrals for two days of LID's and we are still not through the review room.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before October 26, 2005.
Today we have been officially waiting for one year. Yep, one year ago today the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) logged in our dossier. I had hoped that by this date they would have finished reviewing all of our paperwork and we could finally look forward to being somewhat closer to the matching room, however that is not the case. The wait is getting more difficult, especially since everything seems to be slowing down more and more. I am trying to stay positive and know that one day our daughter will be home, but is so difficult. I know that God is watching over us and Olivia and she will be home when the time is right. Hopefully by next Easter Olivia will be home in our arms where she belongs.
On another note, some referrals began arriving on April 6, but I am still not sure when the cut-off date was for this batch. Some rumors say that this batch only covered two days of log-in-dates (LID), but I really hope that is not even close to being true. As soon as the CCAA updates their site, if they do this time, I will make sure I update the blog.
I remember the elation I felt one year ago today when I received the news from our agency that our dossier was on its way to China. After they told me this, my next question to them was...how long until we receive our referral for our daughter? Since at that time the China Center for Adoption Affairs was moving pretty quickly, they told me it would be approximately six to nine months.
So, here we are one year later and we are still waiting to meet our daughter. Since that conversation with our agency, the adoption process in China has really slowed down. As of today, people who had their dossiers logged in beginning on October 25, 2005 are still waiting to receive referrals for their children. The wait, instead of becoming shorter is now growing longer.
One year ago I thought Olivia would be home and in our arms by now. I thought that we would have celebrated our first Christmas, our first New Year, our first Chinese New Year and maybe even Olivia's first birthday. One year ago I would have never thought that we would not have our daughter in our arms by this time.
Wherever Olivia is, whether she is a thought in her birth mother's mind or living in an orphanage or foster care in China, she is a part of me, she has a piece of my heart, she is loved and she is my daughter, somewhere in China.
J has been very busy lately sharing our blog site with many people in the medical profession. I am planning on printing out the pages of the blog and guestbook to share with Olivia when she gets older.
So please, if you are reading this blog, sign in on our guestbook. I am sure Olivia will love to see who looked at our site while we were waiting for her to come home.
One final thought for this evening...
I spoke to our agency yesterday about the wait and the review room. Pretty much, they told me that they do not see the wait time decreasing and as for the review room, no news is good news.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I found out the CCAA had updated their website. I expected to add a blog post this morning for our 11 month LID Anniversary, but I never expected the CCAA to update their site. This is mainly because of some rumors stating that the CCAA would no longer update their site with this information, but that agencies would need to pay for the info. I am glad that the rumors were wrong.
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 31, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before October 24, 2005.
Finally, March is out of the review room, so we are next! I will be relieved to get past that room and into the matching room. Referrals began arriving on Monday and Tuesday, but the cut-off date was up in the air, so it is nice to see the date in writing. I just wish they would get through 2005.
I read this online and just couldn't resist posting it. I can only hope that I am a "mean mom" and Olivia will appreciate and love me as much as I love my mom.
Mean Moms
Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, I will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me: I loved you enough . . .to ask where you were going, with whom, and what time you would be home. I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your new best friend was a creep. I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes. I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my eyes. Children must learn that their parents aren't perfect. I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart. But most of all, I loved you enough . . to say NO when I knew you would hate me for it. Those were the most difficult battles of all. I'm glad I won them, because in the end you won, too. And someday when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you will tell them. Was your Mom mean? I know mine was. We had the meanest mother in the whole world! While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal, eggs, and toast. When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had to eat sandwiches. And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was different from what other kids had, too. Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You'd think we were convicts in a prison. She had to know who our friends were, and what we were doing with them. She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an hour, we would be gone for an hour or less. We were ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labor Laws by making us work. We had to wash the dishes, make the beds, learn to cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, empty the trash and all sorts of cruel jobs. I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for us to do. She always insisted on us telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. By the time we were teenagers, she could read our minds and had eyes in the back of her head. Then, life was really tough!Mother wouldn't let our friends just honk the horn when they drove up. They had to come up to the door so she could meet them. While everyone else could date when they were 12 or 13, we had to wait until we were 16. Because of our mother we missed out on lots of things other kids experienced. None of us have ever been caught shoplifting, vandalizing other's property or ever arrested for any crime. It was all her fault. Now that we have left home, we are all educated, honest adults. We are doing our best to be mean parents just like Mom was. I think that is what's wrong with the world today. It just doesn't have enough mean moms!
Chinese New Year....The Year of the Pig
Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon（新月）on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon（满月）15 days later. The Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements. The lunar cycle（月运周期）is about 29.5 days. In order to "catch up" with the solar calendar the Chinese insert an extra month once every few years (seven years out of a 19-yearcycle). This is the same as adding an extra day on leap year （闰年）. This is why, according to the solar calendar, the Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. The celebration was traditionally highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth（万物）, the gods of the household and the family ancestors. The sacrifice to the ancestors, the most vital of all the rituals（仪式）, united the living members with those who had passed away. Departed relatives are remembered with great respect because they were responsible for laying the foundations for the fortune and glory of the family. The presence of the ancestors is acknowledged on New Year's Eve with a dinner arranged for them at the family banquet table. The spirits of the ancestors, together with the living, celebrate the onset of the New Year as one great community. The communal feast called "surrounding the stove" or weilu. It symbolizes family unity and honors the past and present generation.
We made another trip to Columbus this afternoon so S could have her fingerprints done. Once again, I never knew that fingerprints expired or that they could cost so much money. According to our government, our fingerprints are only good for 15 months and then we have to have them retaken. Of course, this is not free, but costs $70 for each person. However, everyone in the house is not current and we have another 15 months. Hopefully it will not take that long for Olivia to come home.
Today is our 10-month Log in Date (LID) anniversary of our dossier being in China. The good news is that if the wait does not go past 18 months, we are over half-way there. I do not want to even think about the bad news.
Anyway, we are 10 months closer to meeting our daughter.
My mom and Olivia's, waiting not so patiently, Nana, decided this year that she would not take her Christmas tree down until Olivia came home. Being the creative and crafty person she is, she made the Christmas tree into a "Waiting for Olivia to Come Home Tree". If you can see the pigs in the tree, that is in honor of Chinese New Year and the Year of the Pig, which is this year. 
My mom called me this evening to share the news that the CCAA had finally updated their website. Of course, I checked the site about a half an hour before she called me and there had not been any changes. Not only have they updated the referrals...but they also updated the review room. Here is what the website says:
The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before March 22, 2006.
The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before October 13, 2005.
We are so close to being out of the review room!
January 20, 2007
We headed off to Columbus today to have our fingerprints retaken. Who would have thought our fingerprints would expire in 15 months. Well, there was a mess up and S did not have an appointment scheduled, so we have to go back in a couple of weeks.
