Chinese for Travelers Class

Today I decided to sign myself up for a class at the University from their Continuing Studies courses (an advantage living in a college town). I'll be taking "Chinese for Travelers". It's a 5-week class that meets for 1.25 hours a week. It starts in June. According to the syllabus, I'll learn how to order in a bar or restaurant, book a hotel room (probably won't be as helpful for us as our agency or travel planner will have taken care of it for us, but who knows...), greet people, ask for information about a destination, and "much more". I'm pretty excited!

Little Girl Heaven

It's the beginning of Garage Sale season here in Madison. So, today before leaving I told Robert that I would like to look for a cute kitchen set for our daughter.  Every little girl needs a kitchen set to play with (especially since her mom loves food and cooking as much as I do!). We were about to head home when Robert spotted one on someone's driveway who was having a garage sale. I got out to inspect it and it was exactly the one I had been looking at over the past few years and it was in near mint condition.

It has so many cool features: when you place a pan on the burner it lights up and makes a sizzling sound, the microwave has beeps, a working clock, some nice baskets for play food, a drawer for her play utensils. The lady also gave us a chef hat, apron and play oven mits too.

I can't wait to watch her play with it. So many happy hours of playing to come.

Happy Mother-to-be Day!

Well, I think it's finally safe to say that this will be our last Mother's Day we'll be celebrating sans child. It's been a long road to motherhood and I know that all the hardships that we've faced before adopting will have better prepared us for the actual event. Along the way I've made some very close friends in the adoption community and they've been instrumental in my sanity these past almost 5 years. They continue to guide me and I continue to learn from them as some are already experienced adoptive parents and mother's to biological kids of their own. Parenting should be a continuum of learning and I look forward to the day when I get to hone my own skills and raise our own beautiful little girl. I hope to be as wonderful a mom to my daughter as my mom was to me.

Wishing all a Happy Mother's Day and Mother-to-be Day to my other July 2006 adoptive moms-in-waiting!

Binding is (mostly) attached!

After a bit of a rough start, we finally got the binding attached to the 100 Good Wishes Quilt. We're getting to be old pros at this now. All that's left for me to do is to hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt (that's going to take a while!). I think you know what I'll be doing over the next few weeks in the evenings!

I just stare at the quilt in utter amazement and the tears just start to flow - knowing that some day soon our daughter will be snuggling underneath it wrapped in all the warmth and love from everyone who helped to make it happen. And the biggest thank you goes to my mom without whom this quilt would not exist. I love you!

Referrals are in

On Friday, calls started being made and matches are in. I'm still waiting for the official notice to come from the CCCWA (will probably come on Monday), but from the calls that have been made they only matched through June 20, 2006. A 5-day referral batch. We were expecting a better showing for this batch, but I'm waiting to see if maybe expedited families got their referrals in this batch to help explain it. Well, we're still that much closer to our daughter.

Only 24 more referral days to go until we're matched with our daughter! Yeah!

Happy Passover

Wishing my Jewish friends and family a Happy Passover!

It's no joke...

Happy April Fools Day! This is NOT a joke. According to a few European agencies the next batch of referrals are on their way and the cut-off is June 15, 2006. A 6-day referral batch. Only 29 more referral days to go until we're matched with our daughter. Yeah!

UPDATE: IT IS OFFICIAL!! I'm too excited for words.

What's in a name?

Well, apparently the CCAA is now the CCCWA which has been a work-in-progress for a while. This was just posted on their website. I just hope that with this new name comes more referrals... a girl can dream...

As approved by the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform of the People’s Republic of China and upon the decision made by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, the China Centre of Adoption Affairs changed its name into China Centre for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (hereinafter referred to as CCCWA) on 15 Feb., 2011. The CCCWA will continue to be responsible for dealing with inter-country adoptions and will assume the responsibility of developing, managing and maintaining the National System of Information Management for Child Welfare. Moreover, the CCCWA will also undertake tasks in relation to child welfare and domestic adoption that the MCA entrusts as well as other assigned missions.

Finding the Humor

When you wait as long as we have for this adoption to be completed, you kind of have to have a thick skin to make it through. You have to find the humor in the little things and enjoy each day. So, when I came across this illustration, it just tickled my funny bone - I mean how can our adoption journey match more closely than this?! (for those who don't know: for some reason the ladybug has taken on the symbology that a child match is imminent). And the snail, well let's just say that this wait hasn't been quick...

The Stars Must Be Aligning

Well, the stars must be aligning because it's only been 3 weeks since the last batch of referrals and they are already out with the next batch. Our agency should be making their calls tomorrow to those lucky families. On the other hand, the last batch took forever to get here and was very low in numbers, so this evens things out a bit.

The good news is that they made it through June 9, 2006 (7 LID dates). So now we're down to 35 more LIDs to go before we're matched with our daughter. Yeah! I got to cross off a few more days on the ol' calendar. Let's keep 'em coming!