So...I'm a procrastinator. This is most obvious by the fact that even my blog is out-of-date! Every entry up until this point took place before the middle of September last year. All of the bureaucracy that faced us during our paperchase, to include the US government making a clerical error and sending our advanced orphan petition approval to Russia (???), gives me a headache. I thought that I would post a few updates before I try (emphasis on try) to go back and relive all of the "fun" months that we endured while we recreated our life in paper.
It is now June. Tomorrow is Father's Day -- Charlie's first. Even though our little girl isn't home with us, I still think it is important to acknowledge the holiday. If we were physically pregnant we'd be getting lots of recognition tomorrow, so I took it upon myself to plan a celebration for my honey. After all, if we had gotten pregnant when we started this process, our child would be over a month old! So for tomorrow, I even splurged and got him a couple of cute gifts to open. I am even letting Charlie decide if we'll go to church in the morning! Talk about a good holiday for him...It's these little things that keep this experience alive for us. If we didn't make a conscious effort to acknowledge our journey, the whole thing would feel more like applying for life insurance or something equally boring and forgettable.
A little update on our paperwork...because of the government's error in countries, we got pushed back a bit, but our dossier was officially accepted and sent to China on February 10th. We got an e-mail on March 8th that our dossier was officially logged in (LID) to Beijing, which means that our timeclock started 3/8/06. Once the dossier is logged in the waiting game begins. When we started this process, the wait from LID to referral was 6 months. It is now at 12 months and is rumored to go up to 18-24 months. Given that information, our best case scenario puts us at next March for a referral (a photo and medical history of our matched child) and June for traveling to China, while our worst case puts us well into 2008. Your guess is as good as mine!
In the meantime, Charlie and I are keeping ourselves relatively occupied. Both of us are working quite a bit and enjoying business and personal travel. I've thrown myself into volunteer work and we're making the most of our new home on the East Coast. But every little child, regardless of gender or ethnicity, reminds us of our journey.
