22 Days

Referrals have been sent for this month and they covered 5 days of log in dates. This means that there are 22 log in days now before the officials in China have our paperwork in front of them to match us with Lily. Just a little reminder of how this process works:

When we finished compiling all of our paperwork for adoption in June of 2006 (which took us from Oct, 2005-June, 2006) we sent it all bundled up together in a package called our dossier. It was delivered via FedEx to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) and they stamped it with the date they processed it and put it in the stack - JUNE 14, 2006. Each month when referrals are issued, the CCAA matches the babies available with the families, in order of date processed (log in date). It's kind of like pulling a ticket at the deli counter except this ticket is our magical log in date. Referrals are issued about once 25-45 days. When they get to our ticket number/log in date then the CCAA will match us with Lily. Each month, a different number of families whose paperwork has been stamped with log in dates ahead of ours are being matched. This past month, the dates that were matched were May 19-23, 2006. That means that there were enough babies available to match the families that were logged in on those dates. These families had all waited the same length of time...from mid-May, 2006 to now. The wait for these folks was officially 54-ish months. We have waited almost 53 months. Our wait will probably end up being 56-ish months.

When we are matched, the CCAA will send our adoption agency a picture or two of Lily along with information like her date of birth, where in China she is living and some basic developmental and medical information. A lot of this info will be in Chinese and will have to be translated. Once our agency receives it, we will get "the call" and our amazing China coordinator will tell us what she knows. I believe Jeff and I will jump in the car IMMEDIATELY (hopefully our respective workplaces will be understanding) and drive to the office to see pictures and get copies of everything. Then, of course, we plan to share all of this with our friends and family.

After we formally accept the referral, we have to do some more paperwork and wait for China to send us travel approval. At that time, we will book some very important appointments and book our travel. It should be about 6 weeks after we first receive Lily's referral...which I am guessing will be a busy but rough 6 weeks since we will have seen our little one's face.

Does this make sense? I get a lot of questions about how this process works and it is pretty difficult to explain.