The stork has landed!

That wonderful phone call finally came this afternoon. Our beautiful baby girl was born on November 19, 2010.

She is in Gansu Province, which I'm told is in Central/Western China. She has spent part of her time in foster care and part at Wu Wei Social Welfare Institute. Her adorable pictures were taken on September 6th. Her measurement stats are 71 cm tall, 9 kg.

Official

The official cutoff in the latest batch of referrals is August 7, 2006! That's our date!

However, there have been no phone calls reported. Either the packages have been mailed late or delayed by the Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully I'll hear something soon. We've known since Thanksgiving morning that we should be in this group and for once the long holiday weekend was agonizing.

In a worst case scenario our paperwork was misfiled in China and our dossier will have to be relocated. Bad scenario, it was lost in the mail and we'll have to wait for China to resend it. Best case scenario, the folks at Gladney are translating for us and we'll hear from them as soon as they're done.

I heard a rumor ...

This has been a totally wild week for referral rumors. My hopes and emotions have been up high and down low. I'm sure that will continue. However, since today is a holiday, I'm going to let myself have faith in the dream if only for a little while.

Come on, rumors!

Several days ago a rumor surfaced that CCWA was preparing paperwork which usually signals the arrival of referrals about two weeks later. Today Rumor Queen confirmed we should see cut-off date rumors by the middle or end of next week. This puts matters on pace for a quick referral batch, which can, unfortunately mean a small number of days referred. But, if the batch is the same size as the last (which was punctual) then we should be in!

Referral Predictions

We are now approaching the climax of the roller coaster for waiting adoptive parents. The last batch of referrals arrived earlier than expected and included up to LiD Aug. 2nd. As always, the brilliant Rumor Queen looked at her poll data, statistics, and crunched the numbers. I am going to copy and paste some of the text directly below.

"My formula spit out August 7th [as the LiD the next batch will include up to] ...., but I came close to .... making it the 4th. That’s the difference between a Friday cut off and a Monday cut off, so not as big as it may sound. Last month I put the formula’s response of the 4th but said I came close to changing it to the 3rd. As it turns out, the cut off was the 2nd.
"The small window this month would have referrals arriving on or between Wednesday, November 23 and Monday, November 28.  The big window is between Friday, November 18 and Friday, December 9."

The more conservative China Adoption Forecast predicts we will get our referral on December 2nd.
Either way my hopes are high for seeing our baby's face (in a photo) before Christmas. I can't wait to post her picture and share her information with everyone.

Preparing

This afternoon Paul and I will be sitting in on a huge conference call about traveling to China to get our baby. I'm a little nervous about being overwhelmed with information and having a hard time understanding (the main presenter is Chinese).
In the meantime unconfirmed rumors report that CCWAA has matched to Aug. 2. Rumors also state that their computers were down for three days. I swear that place needs better IT because that seems to happen a lot! Anyhow, I don't know if this means they've gotten to the 2nd and are still going, or that they've stopped at the 2nd and will send these referrals out soon.
I'd been hoping they'd make it to the 4th or 5th to insure we'd be in the next batch. However, rumors also indicate that Aug.3rd had a lot of dossiers. Regardless, it's surprisingly early to be getting rumors this specific. I still feel confident we'll get our referral this year

Roller Coaster is speeding up

Many of us in the Chinese adoption community had great expectations for the last batch of referrals. It's a strange joy to NOT be disappointed. Referrals were received around Sept 29 and covered 14 days of LIDs! This was expected because during that time in 2006 the China offices were closed for about a week due to relocation Still, there were more families logged in during that period than the last two. Epic Win!
The next batch of referrals is expected around Halloween. Estimates set the LIDs to get up to August 3 or 4. There is a small chance that they could do more and we'd be included, but we're not getting our hopes up. At this point we're expecting to get our referral after Thanksgiving and travel to get our baby in China in Jan or Feb. We then plan to move to PA in the spring.
That said, there are only TEN MORE DAYS of LIDs before our turn! *squeal* We're so close! We're having a conference call with the case worker and the agency travel coordinator on Friday to begin discussing plans and probabilities.

An Apple a Day ...

Hopefully does not keep referrals away! The latest batch of referrals was a dismal two days. On the bright side, it was exactly what Rumor Queen predicted and July 14 had a lot of families logged in. Apparently, the CCAA (the gov agency in China in charge of all this) moved offices and was closed for at least a week in starting July 15, 2006. This means we may cover a great many days in the next batch of referrals which should arrive in late Sept or early Oct. According to RQ, we should get our referral in late Nov or early Dec. Personally, I'm expecting late Dec or Jan.
In the meantime, the North Carolina Apple Festival begins just yards from our condo in one hour. I'm not scheduled to work in the doll shop until Monday, but I'm "on call" in case the massive crowds overwhelm the others. I'll head out in a few for an apple cidar slushy and other treats. I'm pleased to finally wear my newly made apple jewelry and for the shop to sell some of the apple doll necklaces I made.

Still Waiting

No rumors have surfaced regarding a cut off date for referrals. I'm seeing lots of folks with early August LIDs who are eagerly awaiting news. I'm heartened to know I'm not the only one.
Plenty has been happening to occupy my attention in the meantime: war in Libya, a major earthquake on the East Coast (no I didn't notice it; I must have thought it was a big truck passing), and Hurricane Irene heading for the Outer Banks and then New York City! We were planning to visit the Outer Banks this fall but had since changed our plans. Hopefully they will have recovered well by the time we go. I also hope that folks take the needed safety precautions. We should only get a few wind gusts here, at most. We'd actually be more affected if we were already in Pennsylvania.

Working on matches

Rumor has it the Powers that be in China are organizing paperwork to begin matching families with babies. Let's hope they get through lots of days of dossiers! There are 26 days of dossiers until our turn!

Five years

Yesterday marked the official five-year anniversary of being logged in with China as a family awaiting an adoption referral. At that time we thought we'd be waiting about 15 months ( up from seven to nine when we began the process). I remember the depth of my depression that December when we were told the wait was predicted to be at least three years. From that time on, things began to get worse and we discovered online communities that could give us a realistic picture of what was to come. The predicted wait had long since expanded past five years, but I held out hope because officials in China had promised the wait wouldn't get past five years. They don't like to break promises but I guess some nuance must have been lost in translation. At least things have begun to get a little better. We're still holding hope for a referral before the end of this year.

Revised expectations.

The latest referrals are in and the cutoff is July 13th. That is a disappointment. I am now revising my expectations to getting our referral in late November and traveling to get our baby in January. We were really hoping to get her before the end of the year -- but we're not a Murphy's Law family for nothing! Oh well, maybe we can have a great Chinese New Year/Welcome Home party in February.

Rumors

We're approaching time for the next batch of referrals from China. This is what's known as "Stork Watch" over on the site of our primary source of adoption information/rumors. The current prediction is that referrals will go through July 14. This is kind of a bummer as I was really hoping for something closer to the 21st. However, a week of LIDs is still better than average, so ... Fingers crossed! Anyhow, I expect to know something for sure by this time next week.
For anyone wanting to follow the rumors for herself, here is a link to Rumor Queen blog/forum. She provides a valuable wealth of information to our rather desperate virtual community.
. WWW.chinaadopttalk.com

I also see from her latest post another reason to feel anxious and depressed. There have, in fact, been a few instances of people being delayed and skipped and now I know why. Since we've been the Murphy's Law family of our agency, I feeling a little worried. If our dossier did, in fact, get lost, rest assured that I will fight like a Mama Grizzly to get our situation fixed.