Noelle Dreams & Beyond

It's been a long, difficult decision, and we haven't made it official yet, but we are planning to pull out of our China adoption process. Amazingly, the CCAA has reached May 18, 2006 in log-in-dates, which is just over a month away from our LID. I suspect that if we stayed in the program, we'd be matched with a child in another 6 months or so, which means we'd be traveling to pick up our third child within the next year. Considering we began this process in January '06 that now feels really soon, and ironically this is the main reason we're pulling out. It just doesn't feel like the best thing for our kids, who will only be 3 and 2 next year. Adding a 1-yr-old to the mix feels incredibly overwhelming. I imagined having a big family, and when Caleb and Evan were born, we still intended to add a third. But what feels right these days - and what feels most sane - is to see our family as complete. I want to be a good mom. I work at it every day. I don't know...

Referrals arrived today for families whose dossiers were received in China between December 28, 2005 and January 4, 2006. Whew! It's taken a LONG time to get through the '05 families -- over a year and a half just to get through the second half of '05! More than likely it will take a long time to get through '06 as well, but at least the CCAA is finally matching families who logged in the same year we did. Our log-in date (LID) is June 23, 2006. All I can say is, HERE WE COME, NOELLE!!! We may still be a year, even two years, away, but at the very least we're getting closer...

Lately I've been wondering how long a person can wait for something she wants so desperately without risking her sanity. I was lamenting to Chris that this wait for Noelle is not normal. It's not normal to be on the verge of becoming a mother and to feel like you're a mother in your heart, yet without a child, for years on end. It can't be healthy, and there's no way one can prepare for this. For most people it takes no more than a year to have a child -- a year to learn about becoming a parent, a year to create the nursery and stock up on baby gear, a year to save up and buy the video camera, a year to do all the "last before kids" things, a year to savor the moments of one-on-one time with your spouse, a year to dream about everything that's to come in so little time....But not for us. Sometimes I'm OK with this. I imagine there's a bigger plan that perhaps I can't comprehend, but that I can trust. And then sometimes I feel like I...

We traveled 6 hours yesterday to be fingerprinted for the second time by the federal government for our adoption, which means we've been fingerprinted 3 times in 2 years. The SBI doesn't talk to the FBI and vice versa, so we had to do separate fingerprinting for our adoption and for our fostering license. And because fingerprints expire after 15 months, we've had to do them twice for our China adoption. Oh, the joys of red tape. On the bright side, we got to spend lunch with my sister Rachel, brother-in-law Justin, and the now famous from talking about them so much and posting pictures on my blog, Savannah and Byers. We love being Uncle Chris and Aunt Kat. Of course Mama and Daddy would be nice, too. Santa, do you hear me?

Whew! It's been a busy few weeks since Thanksgiving. I celebrated my 33rd birthday this past Monday and haven't had time to blog about it until now. I'm working 4 days a week again at my day job (temporarily, until we hire another replacement for me - don't ask), and I've been feeling pretty wiped out between that and teaching yoga and holiday preparations - not much energy left to blog. But I have some updates, and I want to share some birthday pix. Turning 33 was not all that fun for me, I must admit. Chris and I certainly thought we'd have kids by now. I was actually a bit glum when I woke up Monday morning, knowing that we'd be spending another Christmas without children and without any idea of when there would be children in our lives. But with Chris' help, I pulled myself together and made the best of the day. To start off, he gave me the loveliest gifts - two scarves from my favorite store, Ten Thousand Villages, and a hat to match one of ...

The CCAA has updated their website again announcing that families with log-in dates through November 25, 2005 have been matched with their children. This means that in the last month they've only matched 4 days of LID's. I read on a blog recently that they've only matched 4 months of LID's in the last year. Considering there are almost exactly 7 months from the last date matched to our log-in date of June 23, 2006, we could be looking at 21 months from now to referral (i.e. being matched with our daughter) if nothing changes. That would be a total referral wait of nearly 3 years!!!! -Not to mention the 6 months it took us from starting the process to our dossier being logged in with the CCAA. WOW. We never imagined this scenario, and our agency certainly did not prepare us for this. In fact, they gave us a projected referral timeline of 6 months when we started the process, and when I questioned this early on after reading some rumors on the web, they revised it t...

Well, the CCAA is doing one thing quickly right now - we're already out of review, which means we're officially on our way to being matched with a child. This is what RQ had to say: "June 2006 is out of review!!! The CCAA review department is smokin’! Congrats to all of the families who are breathing a little easier now, that’s another milestone behind you." Now we'll go into the pending referral stack, probably for many months, but at least we know things are moving along. Penny, thanks so much for the heads up - this is definitely something to celebrate!

From the CCAA website: The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before May 31, 2006. Our LID month is next! This doesn't mean things are speeding up, but it is nice to know that our dossier, which has been sitting in an endless stack of dossiers on a shelf in China for over a year (with the exception of when it was being translated), will finally be reviewed by the adoption officials in China.

I copied the following from today's post at chinaadopttalk.com (Note: RQ=Rumor Queen, the website owner). This information apparently came from delegates in the China Center of Adoption Affairs in response to questions, largely about the wait, from various adoption agency representatives during recent meetings. The news isn't good, but I think it's somewhat reliable, and at the very least it's information, which is something we're getting very little of from our agency these days. In addition to the info from the CCAA and RQ's notes, I've added a few notes of my own after the ~ sign. 1) It seems that about half of the agencies were told the wait will reach from “two to three years” and the other half were told from “two and a half to three years”. (RQ: The important number here is that they are acknowledging the wait could reach three years.) ~To clarify, this means 2-3 years from LID. Our LID is 6/23/06, so we're likely looking at another 1-2 years ac...