Refferal buzz again

Today the rumor queen indicated that it looks like referrals may have been mailed. She said it looked good for the 14th of October. We will have to see what CCAI says tomorrow. Wednesday is the day the agency's site is updated with match information.

On another note...we got our bonuses today. They were about half of what we had hoped for. Still I made a good move because I will be moving into the valley shortly and that alone is worth it. I am so tired of the commute now having done it for almost ten years. Plus I really don't like trucking Sienna 30 miles. Tommorow I tour a new day care for her. they are accredited and do a program with the senior center in the afternoon when the seniors come to the school to read and mentor the kids. The program was featured on several news shows. I heard about the program from one of the moms in our Havarah and she has her son enrolled there and gives it high marks. After talking with them it looks good for Sienna to get in over the summer! The Temple is closed too much during the year because they not only close for Jewish Holidays, and National Holidays, the close for all the LAUSD breaks too. Those breaks add up to another 4 weeks of closures. All in all I think they are closed for 7 weeks or so during the year which is too much for us. There was a teacher that had day care when school was closed but she is no longer doing that.

Getting ready for the year of the Boar!

No news on the refferal front. Everyone is getting ready for Chinese New Year, the year of the Boar, which falls on my mom's birthday, February 18th. We plan to celebrate two ways, on February 3rd we are attending the Families with Children from China's (FCC) banquet in Chinatown. The banquet is so big now that it is split into two events. The other banquet will be on the 24th, the same day as Chinatowns Golden Dragon parade. New years is a weeklong event for the Chinese. Usually the preparation starts at least a week before with the cooking of dumplings. Usually all the women are involved and that in itself is a big party. Then the week of chinese New Year ends with a beautiful latern festival. This will be our first banquet and it will be attended by approx. 300-400 ppl. We are going to have a ten course dinner, entertainers, including the famous dragon dance, a basket raffle and lots of screaming by hundreds of Chinese American kids in ages ranging in grade school down to babies. The end of the evening is usually firecrackers but we will be having a bubble wrap stomp by all the kids to simulate the firecrackers.

On the 18th we are going to the Zimmer Childrens Museum, it is in the same building as the Jewish Federation. We are going with our Temple Havarah group. They are having a special workshop on the chinese new year. After, we plan to go out for a kosher chinese meal.

Who knows we may even attend the Chinatown or Pasadena Chinese New Year Parades.

Sunday

It is all the about attitude! It was such a nice and relaxing weekend. We continue to make progress on the guest room conversion. We cleaned off the top of the desk and Aunt Harriet and Uncle Herbie came to look at it and decided to take both the desk and the nightstand. Thank you god! That just leaves just the bed and dresser. John is coming to terms with the eventual removal of the Michigan bed.

Another major accomplishment this weekend was getting all our tax information together. We need to see how much we owe so we can budget out the rest of the year. We still have taxes, car and home insurance and property taxes before we spend another ten grand for China.

Let it snow!

This is a picture from last week of Sienna with baby Talya. Talya came home with her mom Anat in September. We have hit it off with Talya and her mom. Anat is a single mom and she is raising Talya as a Jew. So there will be at least a couple of Chinese girls in L.A. that can relate to one another. Talya just turned one and Sienna adores her and likes to help Talya do everything, just like a doting big sister does. Talya is right on target for her age and is very smart, curious, mellow, independent and fun. Rarely do we see her get upset about anything. Recently she began to walk and her world knows no bounds.

Yesterday, Sienna had a snow day at school. No not the Michigan type of snow days you are probably thinking of. This was an L.A. snow day where they bring in a big truck of man made snow and make a little tobbogan run for the kids. The kids had a blast playing in the snow on a 75 degree day. That is the kind of snow day I like!

Refferal Buzz

The new batch of referrals is in process and it looks like CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) may be processing the group with LIDS from 9/28/05-10/11 or up to 10/18. We hope they get as far out as possible because that means we are closer to our match. If they got to 10/18 we would have 49 days of matches ahead of us. The end of Oct and Nov are monster month in terms of applications that CCAA has. With the CYN (chinese new year) fast approaching it is a little worriesome.

cleaning up and out

Today a big first step was taken in the cleaning out of the guest room. The bookcase was cleaned out and sent to my mother's house for storage. I was just so excited to find places for everything. I am taking the rocker to my friend Anat's house tomorrow. That leaves the desk, bed, dresser, nightstand and closet to deal with!

Its coming!

Yesterday we received our monthly In Touch newsletter from CCAI. They have predicted again a May referral for us. However, we are on the cusp of April. Their forcast cuts off April at 12/5. We are 12/6, so there is a chance we can hear in April. Also, today we received an email from CCAI indicating it was time to download the waiting family support packet. The packet helps prepare waiting families for the China Trip. Topics include Match Day, Preparation for Travel, When you are in China, Gotcha Day (The day we get our child and similiar to a birthday), attachment and bonding and post adoption depression. the last two sound very similar to what we experienced with a natural delivery, minus the plane tickets. They also cover post placement. I guess all this means is that it is really going to happen and we are getting closer. Over the weekend I let people know that I have furniture and stuff available. I need to start unloading the guest room. John is upset and doesn't want to give up the Michigan bed. It turns out the bed is 18 years old, but I have to admit that it is mighty comfortable.

On a different note I had an exciting day of looking at potential office space on in the valley. I came up with 3 very good potential spots well in budget. So I am excited about that and being close to home soon....

January 12, 2007

Nothing new to report except John and I talked about starting to convert the guest room to the nursery. It would be good to know how old and what sex our child will be. We pretty much are certain it will be a girl but you never know.

January 11, 2007

Well today I found out that according to the Rumor Queen that we are likely to have a May refferal if they process at the same rate. However, if they don't we could be possibly be looking at as late as early September for a referral. Keeping our fingers crossed.

January waiting.....and waiting

Well we have been waiting for our referral since our Log In Date (LID) of 12/6/05. Last week refferals were made to LIDS 9/8/05-9/27/05. So the match room is working on the next set of matches. We hope they make good progress into October. Based on the current average of 14 days of LIDs matched per month we are estimating a May match, with travel in July. This going to end up being at least a 17 month wait not including the paperchase period that began in June, 05. Thats a very long pregnancy.