Pillow Sham

Yesterday, my mom came in town and between the two of us, we were able to finish up the matching pillow sham to go with our daughter's 100 Good Wishes Quilt. I think it turned out beautifully, but I'm a little bit biased. Thanks again mom... you're the best! As always, my mom does the sewing and I do the cutting and trimming.

The official cut-off

Well, the official cut-off for this last batch was 7/12/06 (original posting was found to be incorrect), so we missed it by 2 days. But, we can still say for sure that WE ARE NEXT!!

Happy and Sad

Today was a day filled with happiness and sadness.

First the happy: One of my adoptive friends is about to receive her referral. Yeah! Also, we did enjoy a date afternoon at the IMAX to watch the new Harry Potter movie which was a nice distraction.

Then the sad: We started the morning with the fact that my car needed a new A/C compressor clutch and coil ($$). Then, at lunch time, we found out we'd missed this batch of referrals.

I had my hopes up that this was finally going to be our month only to be let down once again... While we're still waiting for the official cut-off, we've probably only missed it by a day or two (latest rumors have it that they've matched through the 11th). At this point we're still optimistic that we're pretty much a shoe-in for the next batch of referrals. So now it's looking like referral end of Aug/beginning of Sept with travel in October.

Here's the official notice:

7/27/2011 Matches Arrived!!!

We just received a group of matches for our families who are logged in July 7, 2006. We did not receive any matches for our families who are expedited due to Chinese Descent. We do not know the official cut off date at this time as the CCCWA has not updated their intranet site. Congratulations to our matched families! We will be making match calls tomorrow. We will update this website when more information becomes available.

Getting one step closer

When our agency, puts the notice below on their internal website, we know that we're about a week or two away from the next batch of referrals. Time to hang on, because this next week is going to be crazy! Here's to hoping to be in this next batch. We'll probably start to hear some rumblings of rumors by next Friday at the latest I would imagine.

7/20/2011
Preparing to work on Matches

The CCCWA is preparing paperwork to begin to work on matches. We do not know the log in dates for the next group of matches at this time nor do we have any further information. We will update this website when more information becomes available.

5 years

Who would have thought when we started this process that the wait to bring our daughter home would take over 5 years, but here we are on our 5 year anniversary of being logged-in (the date our paperwork arrived in China) finally getting close to seeing our daughter(s) face for the very first time. So much has happened in the past 5 years besides the fact that we're 5 years older. We've traveled the world, Robert got his pilot's license, family has gotten married, lots of kids were born and we just enjoyed life. We've been so accustomed to our life as just a married couple of 2 and now our life is about to take a wild turn. I hope we're ready for it! We've been trying to mentally prepare for it, but really... how can you?!

Hopefully, we'll hear about the next batch the last week of July or first week of August and know if we've made it in this next batch or if we're going to have to endure one more. I'm optimistic, but you just never know.

All I can say is that during these 5 years, I've made some amazing friends in my adoption group and look forward to seeing them in China. Our July 14th LID (Log-in date) is the BIGGIE of the month so we're going to have a lot of families with babies in our group traveling with us. It's going to be a wild time in China!

Please have happy thoughts for us as we hope that our wait is about to end.

Getting ready

Well, we're starting the preparations for our impending daughter(s). We just got our lovely car seats in the mail yesterday. Yeah! We bought two - one for each of our cars or if we're referred twins, then both for my car. Lots more purchases yet to be made, but one more item checked off the list.

Matches Arrived!!

It's official now! The matches are in the mail and are on their way to the states! Congrats to my 2 adoptive friends Shan and Debbie who will be getting "the call" tomorrow and get to see their daughter's faces for the very first time. I am so excited for them!

Next up, is hopefully us!! Only 8 more Log-in Dates to go until we're referred our daughter! Oh my! These next few weeks are going to be a killer!

6/30/2011
Matches Arrived!

We just received a group of matches! We have received matches for our families LID on July 6, 2006 as well as our July 2007 Chinese Expedited Descent families. The CCCWA has not updated their intranet website with the offical cut off date at this time. Congratulations to all of our matched families! We are excited to call you tomorrow! We will update this website when more information becomes available.

The Matching Room

Our files are on their way!

Well, after 5 long years of waiting, our files are now (we think) on their way to the matching room! What this means is that they will now be looking carefully at our dossier (which has 5 years of collected dust on it) and they will learn all about our little family and decide which of their precious children we will be matched with. We are hoping that we’ll be matched in this next referral batch which will hopefully come out either the last week of July or first week of August. Keep those fingers and toes crossed!

I found this explanation on another website that explains the matching process.

How the Matching Room works

First, they review the children’s dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. We are told that they then count up all of the children’s dossiers that are eligible for matching that month and then look to see how far this stack will go in the parent dossiers without sending out a partial day, and they pull all of those parent files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.

Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six children, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 children, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date. Or at least it is when they used to start getting information.

And then they start matching individual children to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies used to hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s). Some agencies shared this information with their clients. Some chose not to. Recently I’ve gotten the feeling that many agencies are still getting this information but they are being given orders by the CCCWA to not share this information with the families.

Just as in the review room, each matcher is assigned certain agencies and is responsible for communicating with their agencies. Some matchers tell their agency the cut-off date, some matchers tell their agency “you have X number of referrals arriving”, some matchers give their agency a list of that agency’s families that will be receiving a referral. And some matchers don’t say anything at all to their agencies.

The next question that comes up is generally how the matchers match families and children. I’ve heard from several people who have had the opportunity to speak with someone who works in the matching room. The various conversations seem to all agree that they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a baby who looks a lot like a parent, or a baby who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Several matching people have stated they match by bone structure of the baby’s face and the parent’s faces (this is why they need our passport photos, so they can compare our mug shot with the baby’s mug shot). Some have stated that they used Chinese astrology, also. Once they’ve matched the obvious matches they then start to look at things like age of child requested. The age requested is not a priority for them, they feel they are matching families and not filling orders.

All of our dossiers waiting to be matched

CCCWA staff working on the matches

Rumors are in

Well, we just got the next set of rumors and it is looking like they're only making it to July 6th for this batch of referrals. So, it's looking like we will finally be getting our referrals by the last week of July or first week of August! We never expected to be in this batch, so now we can start planning and getting ready for being in this next one.

Stay tuned all... it's going to be a LONG 4 to 5 weeks for us! (but so worth it!)

What will our adoption trip look like?

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about how long our trip will be, what will we be doing. So I found this on our agency's website and thought this was a great synopsis:

Q: What does a typical adoption trip look like?
 

A: Every trip is a little different because each province has its own requirements, but we can tell you about a “typical” trip. Groups meet in a port city (usually Hong Kong) where you will stay for 1-2 nights. The purpose of this is to help you adjust to the time difference, rest and tour before meeting your child. Then you will fly from the port city to the capital city of your child’s home province. You will be there for 5-7 nights. Generally, you will receive your child within 24 hours of arrival in the capital city. During your stay in the capital city you will register the adoption with the Chinese Government, apply for your child’s passport, tour, rest and get to know your child while you wait for the government to complete all the necessary paperwork. Usually you can expect to be in the capital city for at least 5 working days. Once the paperwork is complete you will fly from the capital city to Guangzhou where the U.S. Consulate is located. The purpose for going to Guangzhou is your appointment with the U.S. Consulate where you will apply for your child’s U.S. entry visa. You can expect to be in Guangzhou at least one day prior to your Consulate appointment and at least 24 hours after your Consulate appointment. Typically, groups fly from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and then back home. When you throw in a weekend, travel days and put all these elements together you have a 14-16 day trip, under normal circumstances.

Robert and I plan on leaving about 3 to 4 days early to do a bit of traveling ahead of time and get acclimated to the time zone. So, our total trip will be about 3 weeks.