August Referrals

This month's batch of referrals arrived at our agency yesterday, they had only 4 referrals in this batch with log in dates of July 14th 2005. We have heard that this batch had referrals up to July 22nd but our agency didn't have any LIDs between the 15th and the 22nd. Unfortunately this is only 9 days worth of referrals. Last month they did 15 days which was a few more days than the previous month so it looked like the trend was to refer a couple more days each month. Now we are not sure what to think, probably just a coincidence that they were referring more days each month. The pattern of the referrals coming in was a little different this month as well. Usually around mid month rumors start flying around, some good, some bad, and by the end of the month someone in the know will leak how many days will be referred for the month, then referrals arrive a few days later. This month there weren't really any rumors except that referrals would be coming out next week or early September and then on Thursday people started reporting that they were getting referrals. Not sure what to make of this, maybe the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs is getting a little more strict with the information that they release. Probably a good thing as these rumors can drive a person crazy. We have heard that August is a light month so as long as they can get through the rest of July next month August should go pretty fast, we hope.

Jen starts back up at school next week, when we started the adoption process we were thinking that we would probably have the baby by now and she would take some time off, now it looks like she will most likely be working the full school year based on how referrals have slowed down. I guess this just means that we can take our 5th last childless vacation this winter. Something to look forward to. We are still not completely done with out bathroom remodel. The tub and toilet are installed but still no sink. At least we have a partially functioning bathroom now. The sink should be installed next week. We also realized that we need to get the electrician back in to move a light fixture. We bought a new medicine cabinet/mirror and it is shaped a little differently from our old one. I can only see half of my face when I look into it and I am not very tall. So we need to move it up about 6 inches but there is a light fixture above it so we need to get that moved first. We did take the new whirlpool tub for a test-drive this week, very relaxing, definitely a good investment.

5 Year Anniversary

Yesterday Jen and I celebrated our 5 Year Anniversary. We went out to dinner to celebrate and spent a ridiculous amount of money dining at a local restaurant called Silks at Stonehedge Inn. We have been there a couple times and the food and wine is always great. The first time we went we had only been dating a few years and it was our first time in a fancy restaurant. We were so out of our element, funny how much we have changed since then. Someone once told me that life never really turns out how you expect it to. If you would have asked us on our wedding day where we thought we would be in five years, I guarantee we would not have said we would be preparing to travel to China to adopt a baby. I expect we would have said happily married with a couple kids. We are happily married, we are just going about having the kids a little differently than most. We are still working on getting the nursery set up. Our current project is cleaning out the closet. Right now it is being used as Jen's seasonal closet and various other storage, so we needed to get some more closet space. So off we went to IKEA and bought a new wardrobe. We needed some bookcases as well so I took a couple vacation days this week and have been putting together furniture for the past couple days. This prompted us to clean and organize our basement which is a good thing as we hope to use it as a playroom for Gracie.

I wish I had a before pic but this is how it looks now.

This is the other, unorganized side of our basement, where we are storing some of the big boxed baby items.

We are hoping to get everything done this weekend, need to go to Babies-R-Us as the mattress is on sale, which we think is the last big item we need to get. We expected referrals to come this week but they didn't. Looks like they will be coming early next week and will cover Log In Dates through July 13th as was rumored. Although this isn't official yet, the China Center for Adoption Affairs website hasn't been updated and we haven't heard anything from our agency.

Working on the Nursery

We finally have sorted through most of the shower gifts and have them pretty much organized. We have been working on putting the nursery together now that we have stuff to put in there. I will post some pictures when it is complete. We need to get a few more things but are waiting for them to go on sale. The difficulty now is having to look at a completed nursery everyday and we have no baby in there and no real idea of when we will get her. We may need to keep the door closed for a while so that we don't have to see it every day. The next batch of referrals should be coming out this week. There have been rumors that the China Center for Adoption Affairs building is moving and that could delay referrals a bit. The rumors also seem to be saying that this referral group will cover people with Log In dates up to July 13th. This would be 15 days which is 2 more days than last month but unfortunately not a full month as some people in the adoption community were expecting. So our best case scenario of getting our referral in January 2007 is probably not going to happen. We are now looking at getting our referral sometime between February 2007 and July 2007.

Baby Shower

This was a pretty busy weekend for us. On Friday we had a 50th Anniversary party for Jen's parents. Lots of family were up for the party and we had a really good time. Yesterday, Jen had a baby shower. It was so nice to have so many friends and family supporting us with the adoption. We got so many nice gifts, Grace is definitely not going to go without anything. We are still trying to sort through everything and probably will for the next couple of weeks. Today we went to Babies R Us and used some of the gift cards that we got on some of the registry items that were not purchased. I have enough toys and furniture to put together to keep me busy for months. Some pictures from the shower below. We'll post some more as we get them.

CAWLI Picnic

We had a fun day yesterday. We attended a picnic hosted by some families from our adoption agency. There were about 20 families there with children adopted from China as well as quite a few waiting families like us. It was nice to see so many happy families, some with more than one baby from China. We also got to meet a couple more families from our DTC group who we will probably be traveling to China with. We are now a year in since we started the adoption process last summer. It has gone by pretty fast. We hope that the remaining wait time goes just as fast. Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend.

CCAA June Update

The image below is a screenshot I took of the China Center for Adoption Affairs website as of Thursday. They have finished placement of children registered before June 28th. This means that they got through thirteen days of referrals this month. It is good news that they are processing a few more days each month. Although the wait now is at the 1 year point, in order for us to get our referral in January (1 year) they would need to start processing full months of referrals from this point forward. Not sure how likely that is but there are rumors that May and June 2005 were really heavy LID months and July and August are much lighter. I guess we wait and see. Our agency hasn't received the referrals yet, probably will early next week. The other part of the CCAA website update is that they have finished review of applications that they received before October 31st. They got ours in January so we are about two months away from the review room. Once it gets to the review room it is checked over to ensure everything is in order and sometimes they will request additional information from us. Apparently our application has been just sitting in some office in China for the past 6 months, nobody has even looked at it yet. Jen finished school this week so she is happy to be on her summer vacation. We don't have any big vacation plans for this summer as I am trying to save my vacation time for the trip to China and then take a couple weeks off afterward. We are planning to do a little remodeling on our upstairs bathroom this summer. We aren't doing it ourselves though, just hiring someone to replace the tub, fixtures and retiling. This will be the first major work we are having done to our house so it should be interesting.

Adoption Class

I know I haven't updated the site in a while but there hasn't been much adoption related stuff going on. We were pretty busy this weekend though. Yesterday we attended another adoption class called "Adjustment of Internationally Adopted Children". The class was given by the mother of two grown children adopted from South America. Got some good information to help prepare ourselves for when we bring Grace home. On the way home we stopped at the Samsonite Outlet and bought our luggage for our trip to China. We ended purchasing over $600 worth of luggage, fortunately we had some gift certificates from our credit card points so our out of pocket expense was significantly less. I got my first "Happy Father's (to be) Day Card" and many happy Father's day wishes so that was pretty cool. This is about the time of the month that the rumors start swirling about the month's referrals. All seem to be pointing to a few more days than last month. We should know for sure this week or next.

PTAG

We attended our Parent Travel Advisory Group Meeting yesterday at our adoption agency. It was great hearing all of the travel stories but also a reality check that things don't always go perfectly while over in China. The director of our adoption agency stopped by the meeting as well. This was our first time meeting her and she is an amazing woman, we could listen to her speak for hours. The reason we decided to use our agency is because of all of the good things we heard about her. You can really see the love she has for the children and China. She talked a little bit about the growing wait time but basically told us not to pay attention to any of the rumors because nobody really knows what is going to happen. I think at this point Jen and I are at peace with the growing wait time, we realize that we have no control over it so there is no use worrying about it.

Referrals

We got an email from our adoption agency on Friday stating that they had received this month's referrals. This batch went through people with a Log In Date of June 15th, so that is 9 days of referrals since last month. The number of days seems to be increasing by two days each month. Not a very big increase but at least it is an increase rather than a decrease. People keep asking us when we will be bringing Grace home and the honest answer is we really don't know. If the wait time stays around 12 months like it is now we should be getting a referral in Jan 2007 and traveling a month or so later. But that is IF the wait stays at 12 months. There is no way to tell what is going to happen with referrals between now and then. So, we not-so-patiently wait. I can say we are enjoying sleeping late in the morning spending late nights out in Boston, things we won't be able to do soon enough. Next Saturday we are attending a Parent Travel Advisory Group Training session at our adoption agency. This meeting is presented by parents that have already traveled to China. They will advise us on what to expect while traveling in China and what to pack. Should be an interesting meeting.

Too Much Rain

It has been a pretty rough week. Last Sunday night all the rain that we had been getting caught up to us and our basement flooded. Not too much damage, just a soggy carpet. Some of the flooding was pretty serious in our area. A lot of people have some pretty serious damage, so we aren't complaining. Jen's school was canceled for the week so she went to her brother's in Florida to get away from the rain. I also found out that there were some complications with surgery that my brother was having. Still not sure what exactly is going on with him, hoping to get more info later this week and that everything will turn out OK. Nothing new to report with the adoption. Referrals should be coming out this week. The rumors seem to be saying that this group will include a couple more days than last month.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers and mothers to be out there. Last year Mother's day was a bittersweet time for Jen. We were in the midst of fertility treatments and were in church on Mother's day, the priest has all of the mothers stand to be recognized and it was so rough to see Jen's pain as she couldn't stand because she wasn't a mother yet. This year there were only happy tears. Even though the process is going rather slow we know that most likely by this time next year she will be a mom. We spent the day today visiting with our moms. We also finally got around to installing the ceiling light in Grace's room today. The rumor mill is starting to pick up regarding this month's referrals, all seem to be positive rumors but they are just rumors at this point so we aren't taking them too seriously yet.

4 Months

Friday was the four month anniversary of our Log in Date. Based on the current time frame we should be about 1/3 of the way through the wait for a referral. Yesterday, Jen and I went to the Peabody-Essex museum in Salem, MA to see the Yin Yu Tang house. This is a late Qing dynasty house that was originally located in China that has been brought over here and rebuilt. You get to tour the house and see how they lived in China. A wealthy family lived in this house for Eight generations from about 1800 to 1982. Should be a fun place to take Grace to someday.

Baby Care Class

I changed My first diaper

We attended our baby care class yesterday and had a lot of fun. Since Jen is an old pro at this type of stuff she let me do most of the work. I changed my first diaper and it wasn't that bad. Albeit, it was a doll and not a squirmy, screaming child with a poopy diaper. There were 6 other couples in the class with us. One couple is adopting domestically, another is adopting from Korea and another from Guatemala. There were two other couples adopting from China, one of the couples is using the same agency as we are and has the same Log In Date so we will most likely be traveling to China with them. It was great to meet another couple that we will be traveling with. In the class they went over basic care and safety stuff. They also explained how to use some of the different types of bottles. Jen has been bugging me participate in the 6 Weird things tag so....

6 Weird Things About Steve...

1. I can't wear hats. They just don't look right on me, not sure why, maybe I have a weird shaped head. When I do wear one I get comment like (if the person is trying to be nice) Oh, Steve, I have never seen you in a hat. This is usually said with a smirk on their face. Or, if they are not trying to be nice.....Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
2. I have a phobia about things being put in my eyes, like eyedrops. I just hope I never need to wear contact lenses. Probably stems from the eye surgery I had when I was a kid.
3. When I was in college I taught computer classes at a lock-up facility for teenage girls. These girls were there because they were too young to be in prison. On my first day there I saw I girl being taken out in @nkle sh@ckles. Definitely a weird experience. (I had to use the @ to replace replace the a's because some pervs were finding this website through some inappropriate web searches).
4. A few years ago, driving home from Jen's house I hit a guy with my car. He was running from a crime scene chasing another guy with a piece of metal. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, slammed on my brakes then watched him fly over the hood of my car. He wasn't severely injured but they did take him away in an ambulance. The good thing was I slowed him down enough so the guy he was chasing got away. So I may have saved someone's life.
5. I am the tallest person in my family.....and I am 5'-6"
6. My name is Steven King, enough said.

Mail from Guangzhou, China!!!!

We had a little surprise in the mail when we got home today. We got our brown envelope!!! The brown envelope contains a letter from the American Consulate in China confirming that they are authorized to process our adoption. The letter also contains a bunch of forms that we will need to finalize the adoption when we are in China as well as a map of Guangzhou. Some of the forms and the map are written in Chinese so I hope there is someone to help us out. Interestingly the cover letter is dated Nov 22, 2005 so I guess things are a little backed up at the consulate. We were told about the mysterious brown envelope a while back but were warned that some people get one and some don't so we weren't really expecting it. I guess it is not a big deal if you don't get it but it is nice that we did. Tomorrow morning Jen and I are attending a class called Baby Care for First Time Adoptive Parents. Should be a fun little class to get us started with the basics of feeding, bathing, clothing and nurturing a baby. It will be especially helpful for me as I don't have much experience with this kind of stuff. Not really looking forward to changing my first dirty diaper.

CCAA April Update

The China Center for Adoption Affairs website was updated yesterday confirming the rumor that the next batch of referrals will go through June 6th. We were glad to see that they squeezed more days in this month's batch. Things seem to be moving along a little better. Also, we've been tagged. Actually, Jen was tagged but I will probably participate as well. This is a little game that is going around the Chinese adoption websites/blogs where you list 6 weird things about yourself and then ask someone else to do the same, so.....

6 Weird Things about Jen.....

1. I am severely arachnophobic. 1a. When I see a spider I do the slappy-clappy-snappy dance where I stamp my feet and clap my hands in unison while screaming EEEeeeeeee.
2. In my teens I worked as a magician's assistant.
3. I hate mint. It makes me nauseas. Also makes it really difficult to brush my teeth. I need to use cinnamon toothpaste. 3a. Wintergreen is acceptable, however.
4. I hate chicken parmesan. Chicken is yummy. Tomato sauce is yummy. Cheese is yummy. Put them all together and it is the grossest concoction ever.
5. I can't watch people prepare my food. I'm sure I will spot something disgusting and I won't be able to eat. Ignorance is bliss.
6. My utensils can't touch a table in a restaurant without a tablecloth or something between then. These tables are always washed with a disgustingly filthy germ infested rag.
   

Hmmm, seems like someone is a germaphobe with some major food issues. I will post 6 weird things about me (Steve), later in the week. Having a hard time coming up with 6 things.

Chinese President visit to the US

We are expecting that the April batch of referrals should be coming in this week. Rumors are that they will cover people with Log In Dates through June 6th. That would be 7 days worth, not great news but better than the 5 days worth of referrals last month. Seems like things may be starting to move in the right direction. Lots of stories about China in the news this past week with Chinese President Hu Jintao visiting the US. Keep hearing that both sides are agreeing to disagree on many issues, human rights, trade surplus, currency valuation, IRAN and Korea seem to be Bush's major issues. Not sure any progress was made on any of the issues though. Hope the Chinese President wasn't too bothered by the Falun Gong supporter who interrupted his speech on the White House lawn. Have to wonder how something like that is allowed to happen. Jen and I were talking this week and it was around this time last year that we started seriously looking into adopting from China. We've come a long way since then.

Happy Easter

We are expecting that the April batch of referrals should be coming in this week. Rumors are that they will cover people with Log In Dates through June 6th. That would be 7 days worth, not great news but better than the 5 days worth of referrals last month. Seems like things may be starting to move in the right direction. Lots of stories about China in the news this past week with Chinese President Hu Jintao visiting the US. Keep hearing that both sides are agreeing to disagree on many issues, human rights, trade surplus, currency valuation, IRAN and Korea seem to be Bush's major issues. Not sure any progress was made on any of the issues though. Hope the Chinese President wasn't too bothered by the Falun Gong supporter who interrupted his speech on the White House lawn. Have to wonder how something like that is allowed to happen. Jen and I were talking this week and it was around this time last year that we started seriously looking into adopting from China. We've come a long way since then.

Kitty Carrier

It's been a pretty quiet week here, not a whole lot going on. We are trying to keep out minds off the long wait by keeping ourselves occupied. Have been reading lots of books on parenting and adoption. We also find ourselves drawn to anything China related. Last night we watched 7 Years in Tibet. Not really a movie that portrays China in a positive light but interesting nonetheless. Jen's sister-in-law is letting us borrow her Baby Bjorn carrier for the trip to China. Jen had to try it out.....some pictures of the shenanigans for your enjoyment.

This and that

We had a pretty busy weekend, yesterday Jen went out to Chinatown with some of the women from our DTC group. They went to Chau Chow for lunch and then did a little shopping. She had a really great time and it was a good opportunity for her to get to know some of the women that we will be traveling to China with. Today Jen and I went out to Babies R Us and registered for Jen's baby shower. Pretty overwhelming experience (for me anyway). I was fine while we were looking at baby monitors or anything electronic or with moving parts. I was totally out of my element though when we got to the baby bottle supplies. Who knew they make 147 different types of nipples. Luckily Jen's sister-in-law Maura came by and bailed us out. We really needed an expert to tell us what we really need. While we were looking at bibs we noticed a little Asian girl shopping with her Caucasian parents. We really wanted to say hello and tell them that we were preparing for a trip to China but we chickened out. After about three hours of shopping we were exhausted and called it a day. It is amazing how much stuff you need for one little child, makes you wonder how people got by 100 years ago. I added a link to our registry below.

March Referrals

We got an email from our adoption agency yesterday stating that they received no referrals this month and that the China Center for Adoption Affairs has sent out only five days worth of referrals. They are now up to May 30th. This is a definite slowdown in the amount of referrals sent out this month. When we started the adoption process they were sending referral groups out by the month and the groups have gotten progressively smaller. They are telling us that the wait is now at 11 months. That would give us our referral in December. Seems like every month we take one step forward and one step back. Not really sure of the reason for the slowdown. There are a lot of rumors out there, one being that less babies are being abandoned in China. If this is true then that is great news for China and the babies, but we can't help being a little bit selfish and wish the process would speed up for us. There were rumors earlier in the week that there was going to be a small group of referral this month so we kind of expected it.

You may have noticed that there are some advertisements on some of the pages here. I signed up for google ads, so if you click on the ads we will earn money. Not sure exactly how much money we get but it will probably not be enough to pay for Grace's college education.

Jen also went out this week and bought a new rug for Gracie's room at Pottery Barn Kids. Here are some pictures of the rug and the light that we bought last week.