So, with all of this extra time, it's hard to know what to do. A lot of our adoption friends are traveling, which sounds wonderful. That is, if you've never traveled with me. Those of you who have know that I'm not a good traveler. Between the motion sickness and the nervousness, well, it's tough! So I'm doing some virtual traveling. In September I joined postcrossing, where I swap postcards with people all around the world. I have gotten amazing cards from people all around the world, and have learned so much about so many countries (I've also learned that the one place where public education really failed me is in geography...I don't know where most of the countries are!). I've posted all of my postcards on my new "travel" blog so you can see too!
http://marasvirtualtravels.blogspot.com/
I think I've got it up-to-date now with all of the cards I've received - I'll be better too about posting them now as I get them!
I've also just discovered Toy Voyagers. This is where you send your toy voyager (a stuffed animal usually) to hosts around the world for their own adventures. They each have their own travel journal with pictures of all of the places they have been. In January I'm going to send out my own toy voyagers, and begin to host toys from other families. The toy voyager website is http://www.toyvoyagers.com. If you click on "view voyagers" you can read the different travel logs. I will warn you though - I have spent HOURS reading about the amazing places these toys have been! (that, and the pictures are so funny!!) Once I get started, I'll post pictures to my "travel" blog as well!
We're heading to Wisconsin in a few days to spend Christmas with Chris's parents and Martha and Matthew. Then we'll be back home and ready to celebrate New Year's Eve with our annual pajama party at Shana & Stephen's! Happy Holidays!
A New Blog...
Referrals...just not for us...
So, the CCAA has sent out another batch of referrals. No, we're nowhere close to getting ours, but at least we're getting closer to 2006 LIDs. I've made a lot of online friends through this wait, and the 2006 LID referrals will mean a lot of my friends will start to see their babies.
So, what does this all mean? (warning...math nerdiness is coming through here...) Well, they referred 6 days of LIDs this time. That means that we have 124 LIDs in front of us "in line." If they continue at 6 days of LIDs a month, we have 21 months to go (so just about halfway there)...that would mean a referral in early September 2009. Now, if they could pick up the pace by 2 days of referrals a month (totally a possibility), that would cut down our wait to 16 more months (referral in early March 2009). This seems to me to be the most likely scenario - that we would get our referral somewhere around the 3 year mark. Now, there are definitely wrinkles with the math theory - there is nothing to say that the CCAA won't speed up or slow down. And many (including me) believe that we will see an impact on referrals from the Olympics (my gut is that we'll see a month without referrals in August, then a speed-up afterwards). And the fact that a lot of families with LIDs after us are being told that they won't wait more than 3 years means that we will have to wait less. And, finally, there's a lot of talk about the April 2007 LIDs. Yes, this is WAY after us. But I'm hearing a 4 year wait for this group...for that to happen, we would have to see our referral in fall 2008. Here's hoping...
Happy December
So, no, there's no news. And yes, we're really to closer to our referral now than we were at this time last year. (since last December we were convinced we would be home by December 2007...now, I'm really praying for December 2008...) Hopefully things will pick up soon, but I don't think it will. It's been a tough few days for me - how I handle the wait kind of fluctuates, and for whatever reason it's been really hard lately.
Of course, there's a reason to continue to wait. And if you don't mind a few tears, listen to this beautiful new book, The Motherbridge of Love.
(ps - please don't buy us a copy of this amazing book...I already own it!!! :) )