It is official... we have been matched

Check it out... the news we've been waiting for for many many many months. OK... hurry up and get that paperwork to us. We need to get it back on its way to China so that we can get there before Christmas. Hey everyone out there.... find me someone who officially received their paperwork during the week of October 10 and travelled before Christmas. It sure is cutting it close.

YEEHAW!!!!!!!!

So, on whatever day that we receive our referral (You'll hear it here first), we'll be having an open house that night to see the pic. If you want to see the pic before it's posted here, stop by and share in our joy.

To end on a sad note, we really feel bad that they only matched to Nov 30. There's a couple of local families who are close behind and it would've been really cool to meet up in China for a quick visit. Our hearts are out to you all right now.

22 months today

Hopefully this will be our last posting announcing our months of wait. Lets see that countup to referral turn into a countdown to a family.

21 months today

Twenty one months ago our paperwork was logged in the system at the CCAA in China.

Twenty one months ago we expected to wait 8 months to be united with our child.

Twenty one months later, we still wait.

20 months of waiting

Well, another month has come and gone. Twenty months today was our log in date in China. 20 months! Some days, time seems to be standing still and it never feels like we’ll get there, then when Sunday night comes and we look back at how quickly the weekend has gone by, time seems to fly by. Being the middle of summer there’s plenty to keep us busy which makes time go by that much quicker. If it was the dead of winter and we were housebound because of snowstorms, this wait would be much harder.

So raise your glass to our time in waiting. Soon, it will all be behind us.

Scott

19 months today

Well, the wait continues with the faintest glow of a dim light ahead. This process which was supposed to take 6 months is now at 19 months of waiting since our paperwork was in China.

18 months today

Well, here we are... 18 months since our file was logged in China. Who would've thought it would've taken this long?

It's the end of the month again which means that referrals are soon going to be announced. We expect a more normal month of referrals which should take them to the middle of November which should leave us about 2 paper weeks away from getting ours. The talk is that the end of November is another heavy period for files so we're hoping for a July referral but thinking it might happen in August. If it did happen in August, we'd be home with baby "Gertrude" by Halloween. Sooner if the referrals are quicker.

Only time will tell.

17 months and counting!

Sunday marked the 17^th month of waiting! With the processing of only 2 days of files last month, the timeline is sure to get longer before we get our referral.

There is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel though. As we're into a new month now and the next batch of referrals is soon to come, the rumours are flying fast and furious as to how many days it will be this time. A lot of agencies are reporting that they have matched until November 1 – a whopping 6 days! Don't count your chickens before they hatch! Last month, I believe the early rumours said 10 days and it ended up being 2 days. Only time will tell.

Wouldn't November 1 be nice? A longer timeline would be even nicer but 6 days is better than another month of 2 days. They'd be into our month! We're soon going to have to realize that this kid is coming and get our butts in gear to get ready. Way back when, a couple months ago, before the nice weather came, I had full intentions to get the baby room under way. Nope, never happened. So now what's going to happen is that it's going to get nice out and I'll be working away at getting it done. If anybody wants to come over and paint the room, be my guest!

We're off to week 2 of our mandarin lessons tonight. nǐhǎo to everyone.

Happy 16th!

Today is the 16 month anniversary of when our paperwork was logged in China. We've now waited almost 10 months longer than we expected to wait.

Look at the bright side of all of this... er, um, ahh, what is the bright side of an extra-long wait?

15 months today

It's been 15 months today since our paperwork was logged in China. Wow! That's a much longer wait than what we expected 15 months ago.

Any day now, the CCAA should be announcing the next batch of referrals and adjusting their dates of where they are with the matching. Like I mentioned earlier, there's 40 some paper days of files ahead of us. On average, they've been taking 2 calendar days to process 1 paper day so they've been processing about 2 weeks of paper files for every month that passes. Let's hope that they stay consistent or make even more progress this month.

This weekend is the yearly Children's bridge trip to Moncton. They're calling for a whopper of a Nor'Easter starting Friday so I hope that it doesn't affect the turnout too much. Friday night is the Information Session for families that may be interested in adopting. Saturday is an all day seminar on preparing for the baby, what to expect when in China, etc... we've been to this twice in the last 2 years so we'll probably skip this. Sunday is some speakers including an adult adoptee who grew up in Cape Breton. This will be quite interesting as it will put a perspective on what it was like growing up in the Maritimes.

14 months

Today marks the 14th month of waiting. With the rumor that the next batch of referrals is supposed to be out later this week, we'll have a better idea then as to where we stand.

My project weekend was quite successful. Some of those projects that have been put off too long are now done and other are under control. The next major project is to convert my "office" to a kids room. Our house is 30 years old and the windows are the originals. We were going to replace the one in the kids room this winter but now that we're almost thru the worst of winter, we'll probably wait until the fall. The federal government has reintroduced some home renovation rebates which take effect in April, so we'll definitely wait until then to see if we qualify for any money.

You may wonder what happened to the old layout of our blog. Something weird is happening and I cannot display the second column of any 2 column blog. Until I figure out whats happening, I've switched to a simpler 1 column blog so at least you can read it properly. It might be time for a new look for the blog anyways.

13 months of waiting

Today we celebrate 13 months of waiting since our file was logged in China. We are now 7 months overdue from what we expected to wait for our referral. When our paperwork was logged in China on November 29, 2005, the wait to the referral documentation from the Chinese government was 6 months. It's now extended to probably closer to 18 months.

The next referral cutoff date is rumored to be announced on December 31. Let's wait and see how much closer this brings us.

it's been 1 year since our log-in in China

Think about time. According to the American heritage Dictionary, time is defined as An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration. Just like an inch or a gallon, time is a set measurement. One second is always the same. It never changes, it never fluctuates. But time has the appearance of being different in different situations. Think about any 12 months of your life. Did it pass quickly? The old saying is "time flies when you're having fun". It's not that time passes more quickly, but rather, we do not monitor time therefore it seems to pass quickly. For some it may have seemed like an eternity. An inmate in solitary confinement spends so much time in their cell that time must seem to stand still for them. "A watched pot never boils." doesn't mean that watching a pot actually retards the boiling process. It just means that we are more aware of the time it takes for that pot to boil. We watch the burner get warm, we see the small bubbles form on the bottom of the pot, and then we see the water come alive as the molecules become more active from the heat energy.

Today is 1 year since our file was logged in China. Does one year ago from today seem like that long ago? For us, the year has been a test of patience. We've been watching that "pot" for 365 days now. We started in this process expecting a 6 month wait from our paperwork log-in in China until we received our referral. Now, we're looking more like 15 or more months. Could we have predicted this? Somewhat, but I think most people choose to pay attention to their hopes and not to the reality of the moment. The average time line for the China program has been closer to 12 months. As in a year ago, time lines were at 6 months and during the SARS epidemic, time lines for families waiting to travel close to that time were closer to 2 years.

Don't get me wrong. An extended time line also has its advantages. We've had more time to do renovations to our house. Without another mouth to feed and a bum to change, we've had more money to save for the trip and pay down our debt. We've had more time to strengthen our marriage and more time to think up names for little "Gertrude".

Let's hope and pray that when the second anniversary of our LID comes around that we still won't be waiting for our referral.

Keep watching our blog. Every day brings us one day closer to our goal!

11 months of waiting

Another month has come and gone. Our file was logged in China 11 months ago today and I don’t think we're any closer today than we were 11 months ago. This is becoming a great exercise in patience.

10 months today

Today is the 10 month anniversary since our paperwork was logged in China. The end of the waiting is not yet in site. Enough said.

9 months of waiting

If "we" were pregnant, I'd be handing everybody cigars right now. But we're adopting so all we can do is count the months, not quite knowing when we'll get our referral. I don't think there's many people out there who are at the same spot that we are that would've thought that the wait would be as long as it is today.

Well, we're that much closer than we were 9 months ago so thats a good thing, right? Also this wait is giving us time to get the last of the renovations done on the house before the kid comes. We're laying new floor, paiting walls and tossing the old "hand-me-down" furniture down in the family room for some new laminate and some leather furniture. Now if we could just keep the dog off of it.

8 months of waiting

We have now reached 8 months of waiting since our paperwork was logged in China. It looks like the cutoff on referrals coming for this month will be July 13, 2005 so they're still hovering around a year until referral.


Eight months down, I don't know how many more until referral!

6 months in and no end in site

Today is our 6 month anniversary of our paperwork being logged in in China. We're still waiting and don't know at this point when we'll really get our referral. When we started this in April of 2005, people only had to endure a 6 month wait, but it has slowed down to at least a year since then.

I guess all we can do now is wait... and wait... and wait!