ONE YEAR LOGGED IN!

It's our first year LIDverasry today. Let's look how far we've come in the past year.

When we were logged in, there were 948 days worth of log-ins in front of us.

There are now 899 days.

That makes it a grand total of 49 days referred in the past twelve months.

The most recent referrals were logged in for over 41 months.

Working on an average of 3.1 days of referrals a month, we are due to receive our baby some time in January 2019. (See the calculations)

Ha!

Even if things speed up 10x (what are the chances?) and CCAA starts referring month for month, it will still be 30 months more of waiting, or February 2012 before our referral.

I'm still optimistic that things will speed up after we get through the May 2007 files (when the rules changed). When people ask I tell them we expect it to be another three or four years wait. Surely it won't be ten.

Dossier to China

Oh, for the longest time I've wanted to be able to say we are DTC... and now we are! Two years and twelve days since lodging our Expression of Interest in being assessed, and 8 months and 15 days since being approved (we do things quickly in Queensland, have you noticed?) our dossier is on a QANTAS plane and making its way to China. I saw a QANTAS plane in the sky on my way home from work tonight and choked up a little.

We are officially Qld batch #1 2008. Don't hold your breath, I doubt there will be any further batches from Qld this year. The China officer advised that in 6-8 weeks she will contact the CCAA (China Centre of Adoption Affairs) and find out our log-in-date.

To say I'm relieved is an understatement.

I know there is a massive wait ahead of us, but I do feel like we have finished one chapter of a book and are starting a new chapter. And that feels good!

Referrals to Nov 25, 2005

Go Australia! Yeah yeah yeah! This is the first time I've seen Australia find out referral information before the rest of the world! Usually we find out a good week later than everyone else.

I don't think there are any Queensland families in the latest allocations, but I know that there is one very happy batch from Tasmania!

It's disheartening though to see that only four more days made it through this month. There must be a huge truckload of families logged in with a November 2005 date.

'Not to deter foreign adopters'

The CCAA has spoken out about the new regulations and how they have been misinterpreted by foreign media in an article today. The article appears in Xinhua, the official press agency of the Chinese govt, reporting directly to the Party's Propaganda Dept.

I like this line - 'The new rules will help shorten waiting times for qualified foreigners and speed up the process for children...' Yee-haw! Now we just gotta hold tight and see how loooong we have to wait for the wait time to shorten!

(not that the wait times affect us personally yet because we're a fair while off being DTC/LID, but we're following along with a whole bunch of cool people in the big long queue for referrals)

I thought the last line of the article was a bit interesting too.

CCAA Update

The DoCS website was updated with this info last week regarding inter-country adoption from China.
Woohoo! -
The China Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has advised the Australian states and territories that, while the upper age limit is still 55 years, CCAA has a preference for younger parents for the children requiring adoptive families and specifically want to find young parents for children under two years.

Boohoo... -
CCAA has also advised that waiting times for the China program have increased. Once a group of files is sent to China, couples can anticipate waiting approximately 13 months until they are considered for a placement. This waiting time may change, depending on the number of files received from overseas countries.