Just a few words from the peanut gallery...

Did I mention how excited we are??

Not too much to report. We are well into our dreaded paperchase. We got our birth certificates and marriage license, we got clean police background checks, Bob has had his physical (he has to get his TB test yet),I have my physical next Thursday, most of the paperwork for our agency has been filled out, our I-600 (orphan petition) is sent in...whew! I forgot how crazy this whole process is!

The news on the referral front is not very promising. Timelines continue to climb. By the time we are logged in we will probably be looking at a wait of about 2 years. We are, of course, hoping and praying that the pendulum will swing the other way during our wait and that we will be united with our daughter sooner than later.

The name situation is still up in the air! But we are considering all offers for naming rights and would probably yield to the highest bidder! (Just kidding of course...If only it were that easy! Bob and I might be in divorce court over the name before this whole thing is over!!)

The Countdown Begins...

On Friday, December 8th (I think) the CCAA met for their annual meeting where many new rules and regulations were added to the Chinese international adoption program. Apparently the Chinese program has become so popular with adopting families that they now are getting twice as many dossiers submitted as there are paper-ready babies. With that said, China is now becoming more stringent on their adoption criteria. The main areas that they are going to chang are with the singles adoption and there will also now be a weight requirement. As of May 1, 2007, single women will no longer be able to submit dossiers to China for adoption. I think this is so very, very sad for both potential mommies and babies. The new weight requirement states that all adoptive parents have a BMI of 40 or less. I guess that they are assuming that people above that level have a bigger chance of having serious health issues.

So what does this mean for us? Not too much. For starters, we hope to have our dossier submitted by April. We will definitely have our paperwork in on time, it is just a matter of how quick and efficient INS is with our fingerprint processing. It just stinks that we have to wait on something that is completely out of our control. If for some reason we don't make the May 1st cut-off we should still qualify under the new rules and regs.

Anyhoo, we meet with Sara on Monday to get our stuff rolling. I aleady ordered our birth certificates and marriage license...now we only need 10 or so more documents! Geesh...I forgot how much fun the paperchase is!!

The first of many...

We're on our way! Our application is in the mail!

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