Time Line

Oh my goodness!  China has officially matched families with login dates upto July 28th, 2006.  That is a two week jump which is very exciting.  It is okay, I'm not rejoicing at more orphans, but more families being made.  There are actually not a lot of families represented by those two weeks at the Chinese adoption offices were closed for a good portion of that time.  But it brings us closer, oh, so much closer.  There are only 18 days of LIDs in front of us in line...18 days!

Now we just need our homestudy signed, sealed, and delivered!  Our social worker said she hopes to have it back next week sometime.  We cannot press for them to hurry because that just brings on the reminder that IF we had just kept our paperwork upto date...

We could have a referral in as little as 3 months...or as much as 8 months.  A referral is when they send us a tiny little picture of the child they are going to allow us to adopt.  It will be the first day that we see our daughter's face and learn her name.  It will be a very exciting day!

So I have never really explained the timeline we will be looking at on the blog; partly because I don't exactly understand it myself, but I'm going to try.  Feel free to ignore the rest of this post.  (I know my day to day friends hear it weekly, but some may be curious.)

We sent our paperwork to China and got a LID 8/15/2006
We waited.
Currently China is matched up through families with LID 7/28/2006
We wait some more.

Approximately once a month China releases more matches.  These matches are done all internal to China and who the children are waiting for these matches are is known only to China.  No one knows anything about their match ahead of time aside from what they requested on their paperwork--typically healthy girl, 0-12 months or as young as possible for US submitted paperwork.  (Those with less rigid desires have usually been steered to special needs by now.)  But China can match you with a child that does not fit those parameters.  Some people's paperwork will say boy or girl, but when everyone filled their paperwork out in 2006, if you wanted a boy you were steered to another country.  We were open to a little older and/or minor special needs, but our homestudy still says girl, 12 months or younger.  In 2006 it seemed so reasonable.  After all, there were so many baby girls needing homes.

The next group to get a match will have a LID of 7/29/2006 plus some days.  This matching will probably occur around the end of October.  The number of additional days that will be matched will vary--It has been as few as 2 days and as much as 14 days, currently over the last year an average of 5 days.  If they go 5 days the batch will include families with LID 7/29/2006- 8/2/2006.  This is not beyond the realm of possibility.  Then another 5 would get them to 8/7 and another 5--8/12 and then we would be in the next batch!  That is only 4 batches, Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan.  It could go up or down by several months.  If they just do 6 days each time we would have a referral 3 months from now, just in time for the new year.

Hopefully by the time we get our referral, whether in 3 months or 6 months (if they match 2 days at a time) we will have our homestudy finalized and our i-800 approved.

After referral we send a letter to accept the referral--RA
Then all the different US steps surrounding the i-800
Then Travel Approval
Then Consulate appointment in China (a week after picking up the child)

The timeline on all this varies, but typically a family will travel 2-4 months after referral. Our agency appears to be fairly slow at this part of it, so I'm not expecting to travel until 4 months after seeing my baby's face, but that can be different depending on Chinese holidays or other traveling families.  We will be in China for two weeks and the adoption is finalized in China.  We can redo the adoption in our state which is recommended.

So it should be clear why having our i-800 done now would be a good thing, but really God's hand has been in it all...I expect He will be in this as well.  Or at least that is the only explanation for why I am not completely panicked and calling my agency hourly.

Instead, I'm going to go pick up SnapDragon from his every Wednesday early release.  Are my children never at school?