Conversation with nate

Daddy and nate had been talking about nate's baby sister and how we will meet her, a few hours later we had this conversation.
nate: mommy, baby sister lives far away
mom: yes i know.
nate: we have to get on a plane, plaplaplane (sound of a put-put airplane). nate is going on plane, daddy is going on plane, mommy do you want to come too?
mom: yes i really do! :-)

Matching Rumors

there are rumors this week that they have started matching families with babies. the waiting is slowly becoming less and less painful for us. we know we are next and that sometime within the next two weeks we will finally get to see our daughter's face. we are so excited.
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just a look back almost 5 years ago to when we were doing our paper chasing. it took us about 3 months to do our paperwork, which included police background checks, fingerprinting, doctor appointment and paperwork stating we were healthy including a full blood workup, our birth certs and marriage cert., financial statements and employment letters (a total of 10-12 docs.). And of course a home study with a visit from a social worker and answering a ton of questions about us and our marriage. (since then we have done this paper chasing process an additional 4 times!!)

Then all these documents had to be notarized, thankfully we knew two notaries.

Then they all had to be state certified, this is to certify that the person who signed as a notary is actually a notary. this is where we experience a huge fiasco. we sent all our documents to get state certified and our entire package was lost. at the time they signed for a huge case of fed3x packages and didn't check that all were there. ours was not, but there was a signature so we had no recourse (they have since change this process due to our loss). We had to do ALL our paperwork AGAIN while living in a different state! We did all our paperwork in about 14 days this time, a miracle! Then, Fed3x temporarily lost our paperwork again while we were living in New Jersey and placed our package in the wrong apartment. we did finally find our state certified paperwork package.

Then we had to get our documents authenticated. we sent all docs to the Chinese consulate, this was a very expensive process, and i really don't even know exactly why this was needed but it made the docs look really official. But this was the final step to finishing our dossier and we sent it all off to our agency which sent it to china and our official date that our paper work was logged into the china office was may 19th 2006.
Here is a picture of us right around the time we were starting the process.

Sept/Oct referrals--May 18th

well it seems the rumor is that they have done referrals to May 18th. Uuggghhh! we missed it by one day, one day! So this means we are next. "When" that will be, we're not sure. they kind of skipped over September, referrals should be coming out around sept 30/oct 1. yes, that means no one on this entire planet got a referral this september. so if they mail these referrals out and they arrive October 1st, this will probably count for October's batch, which means sometime in november we can expect ours.
We are next! We are next!

predictions

on one of the other chat groups i am on we were all making predictions on where our babies are and when they were born.
so here are my thoughts. we will see how close if at all i will be.

born March 26 (my sister-in-laws birthday) :-)
born in jiangxi province (fuzhou or ganzhou city)
well, maybe only about 40 more days 'til we find out...

getting closer

last week we were at one of our favorite places for lunch , panda express, and we got a fortune cookie that read: you will enjoy a trip to asia. i think it is a sign. :-)

the wait

i was recently thinking about how our lives have changed OR have not changed in the last 4 years since we started waiting. what were YOU doing differently in 2006? it seems like this waiting has become a part of our lives and is somehow hard to believe it will not be there in a few more months. all the paperwork, the slow downs, the Olympics, the slow downs, H1N1, rumors, theories, more paperwork, skipped months, quotas, fingerprinting, and counting down the days to our log in date of May 19th. waiting is hard to do and our wait has been long but it made us stronger and made us focus on what is important.

we still live in the same house and have the same cars. i've had two jobs but now i no longer work outside the home. p has changed departments 2-3 times and has moved from building 1 to building 2 to building 3 and is now back to building 1 again. we have done a ton of traveling and we even went to the west coast, a place i swore i would never go. We have had several close friends and family die. We went to vietnam and met the most amazing little boy ever. We have a beautiful son!

the wait is almost over. a new chapter will finally begin.

August referrals--May 15th

this month they got to May 15th! that's 5 more days! there were rumors that they could maybe get to the 16th. that day is really huge (so many agencies sent in dossiers that week and got logged in) and we were is shock that it was a possibility/rumor, unfortunately they didn't get that far.

For Sept we toggle back and forth as to "will this be our month"? they will probably only get to may 17th but man, just a little bigger of a month and they could get to the 19th. We are counting the days to Oct referrals. we believe that is our month!

we haven't done much in getting ready yet. we do have so much to do, it is a little overwhelming. sometimes it just doesn't seem real that it's around the corner. We are so close yet we have been so close for 4 years it's hard to wrap your brain around it this time. it took them an entire year to get through March 2006 and this year they may just get through 2 months. i still remember the days when they did 30 days of referrals EVERY month, now they do 2-5 days a month.

i'm pretty sure that both our baby registries have expired. i stopped pushing the "due date" back on them a couple of years ago. i kept getting notices that the items i picked were no longer available or there was a recall on them. i will have to go do that soon, it's just so hard since i don't know how old she will be yet. i will let you know when i get that done, that's another thing that will make it feel "real". We are slowly getting the house ready, moving furniture around and all that goes with that.

Pray that there are no delays for the next few months. all our paperwork is just fine, and that we will hear some good news in October!
kare

Day Dreaming

this is a poem a may lid'er wrote at the beginning of the wait. little did she/we know that it would take 4 years for her to get "the call".

Day Dreaming
i stepped into her room today
knowing she's not there
this waiting for referral
is more that one can bear

but taking in the moment
i sit down on the floor
and dream of her here with me
when waiting is no more.

a little giggle fills the air
as i rub her feet
i place my hand upon her heart
to feel its every beat.

a song is sung so very soft
her eyes begin to close
she's meeting me in dream land
a place where love still grows.

my vision now is very blurred
the tears stream down my cheeks
i've dreamed of her quite often
through these pas few weeks.

suddenly a sound is heard
the phone rings in the hall
waking up i quickly pray
please let it be "the call".

July referrals--may 10

China actually did 14 days! Only about 5 of them were actual LIDs. they got to may 10th! it came a little later than we thought. they did not arrive until around july 16th, the china office was on a trip during the beginning of the month and matching started late. rumors were flying the entire second week of july.

we are only 9 days away from a referral. what does that mean? at a rate of 4-5 days a month we should get a referral in october! the next few days are really large days, so we predict that they will get to around may 15th for aug, and may 17th for sept and to around may 24th in october. we are praying that this will happen and we will hear very early in the month so we don't have to sit and wait in agony longer than necessary.

i just did a cyber baby shower with another woman in nova scotia. her name is shauna and is a single mom with a lid of may 22. we will probably travel together. the theme was "year of the tiger", since that is what the sign our children will be born under.

there were a few families that has an early may lid and did not get a referral this month. the first week was a holiday in china during 2006 and they were told their lid was may 1-6. this was a mistake and they didn't get a referral and are hoping to get one next month. very scary, makes you doubt if your lid is correct.