Update on our little Lia

I just wanted to explain our new timeline for the adoption. Officially, we are logged in on 4/13/07 with the China Center of Adoption Affairs and have requested a non-special needs girl aged 0-12 months. Right now referrals for NSN are averaging 20-21 month wait for a referral, but this time is increasing, and is expected to reach a three year wait. While this was originally the plan, we have had a change of heart.

I have always felt drawn toward our agency's waiting child program. What CCAI does is have a prospective adoptive family fill out a Medical Conditions Checklist which states the "special needs" your family would be open to. Here is the checklist. There are a variety of special needs ranging from birthmarks to more major issues. We have selected needs that I feel that we could easily handle. I spent a lot of time researching and talking to other families. Since Caelan and Garrett are so young, I still felt like the age range we previously indicated would be best for us, though we said we would go up to 16 months. We still would like a girl, as we all have our hearts set on our "little Lia."

What our agency does is organizes the checklists into an order based on when the ckecklists were received. As they receive referrals from China, they match these children with adoptive parents. The parents then have a week or so to review the file, bringing the file to doctors or further researching the specific special need before deciding if this is their child. So far, our agency is working through checklists submitted in October/November/December of 2006. We turned our checklist in March of 2007. Now, if a child has conditions that do not match any of the potential adoptive families, their profile is posted on our agencies waiting child list. Generally these children have more severe needs or are older children.

We are very excited about this change and hope to have a referral by Christmas, though it could be longer (or shorter). Generally, travel is 2-4 months from the time a family submits a letter stating that they wish to adopt a waiting child.