Where Oh Where Is Baby Sissy?

Things have been pretty hard lately and to say that I was in a "funk" would be an understatement. We were up for a referral for China's May list and we were skipped. For some reason I just had a feeling that we were not going to hear anything.

When it was finally confirmed that the list came out around the 13th, I emailed our agency at the end of the week to find out what happened. I thought maybe there were no children that fit our profile or that there were more people ahead of us than I thought. Nope. Turns out with China's new system there is a stressful rush to lock in a child's file when it hits the system and while our agency tried to lock in "a couple files" for us, another agency got to them first.

Two months ago our agency (the largest) was the only one to get up in the middle of the night to hit "opening time in China" and grab the kids on the list. Two months ago, our agency placed 36 kids. This month, they could only get 16 because all of the other agencies were up too.

I know that when we find out who Baby Sissy is, that we will be so grateful that we were skipped, but for now I am living in my own little pity party.

The boys headed out of town this weekend for some relaxation and fun while I stayed home and worked. Needless to say, I haven't been all that productive. I did hit Target last night for a few things for Baby Sissy, which I thought would make me feel better. It actually did and hopefully when the boys get back, we can talk about starting Baby Sissy's room. That should be fun.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us around the 15th of this month when the new list comes out. If we get a referral, we will have a very short period of time (24-48 hours) to decide whether or not to accept the referral. Once we accept the referral, we must send a Letter of Intent to China asking for approval to adopt the child. About 15-25 days letter, China will send a PA back to us saying that they located our file and have put it together with the child's file. Our file will then be reviewed and we really cannot really be guaranteed until China approves our request to adopt Baby Sissy. The whole process from reviewing the file to going to China is taking about 3-5 months.

Another downside is that with China's new rules, we cannot post anything about the call or Baby Sissy until we get the PA back from China. This could be a month after we get the call. Although I cannot officially post anything about the referral, I will be happy to post again if we get skipped so everyone will know if we are keeping silent for a reason :)