Happy Chinese New Year! Gung He Fat Choy! (in Cantonese) It's actually the only thing I know how to say in Chinese so far, because my grandpa taught it to me when I was little. He loved to be able to go into a Chinese restaurant (one of my grandparents' favorites) and wish them happy new year in Chinese. Who knows, perhaps my grandparents' love for Chinese food is one of the reasons we were so drawn to adopting from China. Even so, I'm glad that the one phrase I know so far is such a happy one.
In addition to it being Chinese New Year, yesterday marked the 10 month mark in our wait. Double digits...oh joy. I celebrated by buying "Cinderella." Why? Because yesterday was also our niece Caroline's 3rd birthday (Happy Birthday Caroline!!), and there is nothing she loves more than princesses. Her favorite right now is Sleeping Beauty, but Cinderella is also high on her list. And since Christopher went through a bit of princess withdrawal when we got home from visiting them at Christmas, we now have our own bit of royalty to watch. Here's hoping our little girl loves being a princess as much as Caroline does.
恭賀新禧! Happy New Year!
A few more steps forward...
Last night, the CCAA updated it's website as another batch of referrals arrived in the United States. And we take a few more steps closer to meeting our daughter. 16 actually. (16 days of LIDs were matched this go around) At this pace (16-17 days a month) we would probably have our referral in January '08 and travel sometime in March '08. The strangest thing is that when we started the process, I kept saying that I had a feeling we would be in China for Passover. It isn't too much of a stretch to think we could be in China for Passover 2008. Sure, I thought Passover 2007, but my magic eight ball isn't that specific.
The bigger news is that the CCAA also updated the part of the box about the review room. Dossiers through March 22 are out - that means we are in review right now. I'm nervous. REALLY nervous. Our adoption coordinator just found a typo on our INS approval (don't even get me started...), and I am working right now to get it fixed. Since it is highly unlikely we will even be able to travel on this approval (fingerprints are only good for 12 months; the approval is only good for 18 months), we will have to go through the process again anyways. (Not only will we have to do all the paperwork again, it will cost us approx. $1000 to file all of it. If you want something to do, write to your congressman to support a bill that was recently proposed to extend how long the I171-H, the approval form, is good for) But I am worried that they will want a corrected form before we can get through review. The real problem is that this could set us back a month or two in receiving our referral. There's no way to say for sure it would happen, but even the possibility is making me sick to my stomach. Here's hoping that the CCAA misses the typo too, or understands that it doesn't really matter.
16 down, 186 to go.