Referrals, referrals, everywhere...

It's that time of the month when CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) places their kids with their new parents. It's really a fun time every month for us to watch those folks getting their matches. For example, good friends of ours (Steve and Mellissa) received their referral/match this past Friday. She is beautiful! Check out their blog with photos.

Another blog we read regularly (Do they have Salsa in China) received their referral today. They received twins! Check out their blog with photos.

All three girls are absolutely beautiful. We are so happy for them.

The question we tend to get all the time is: so, when will you get your referral? Well it's a very complicated question to answer. First of all, it is completely out of our control. We are simply waiting on CCAA. Truthfully, they haven't even reviewed our adoption application yet.

If you look at the image to the left, you'll notice that they have reviewed documents through October 31, 2005. Our documents were logged in April 24, 2006. So, we have a ways to go. The rumor is they should be through November 2005, but they haven't updated that portion yet.

The other thing to note on the graphic image above is the placement of children date, which is July 22, 2005. Our friends Steve and Mellissa were logged in July 19, 2005. So, they placed children to those people that were logged-in from July 14, 2005 through July 22, 2005. They only placed eight days of LIDs.

This is why our LID of April 24, 2006 is extremely important. Basically, at this rate, it will be two years before we get our child(ren). It's been told to us many times that this is a cyclical process and that it slows down and then speeds up. It's been very slow for about eight months now. So, hopefully, it will speed back up shortly.

The graphic to the right gives you the historical detail. The first column is the date the CCAA Web page was updated, the second column is the review of adoption applications and the third column is the dates of placements. If you look closely you'll notice that from December to January, they placed about 20 days of referrals. It began slowing down right after that. From January 23, 2006 through today, the average placement of children by LIDs is only 10 days. So, that would, again, put us somewhere in the two year mark. But, that's if you have an analytical mind. We do not believe it will be two years. We believe next summer. But, you never know.

So is that clear as mud?

We've been keeping ourselves busy, however. I've been updating the blog's features practically every day. If you haven't noticed there are a lot of links to the left that include the CCAA Web site, other blogs we follow and just a lot of cool things we use. We have basically become an aggregator for all things China-adoptions, finalizing our kitchen plans and working.