CCAA sent referrals out to those families that had LIDS (Log in Dates) of March 23rd and March 24th of 2006. So this was another small batch in terms of calendar days and a lot of disappointment out there among those families still waiting. The wait is currently 41 months and still growing. We hit our 40th month anniversary of our wait yesterday.
Yesterday, we spoke to both of our agencies (Lifelink--Illinois/Adoption Advocates--Michigan) regarding the need to update more paperwork. We will begin the process to request fingerprint renewal (fourth time) with Immigration in late September. Because we aren't sure of our referral date, both caseworkers recommend that we hold off on renewing a second document until January. There are some side items we can begin to work on while waiting for January to come along (complete physicals, letters of employment, background checks with the state of Michigan -- second time).
As we explained to both of our caseworkers, we have grown numb to the wait--it doesn't surprise us anymore---the maddening part of all of this is the fact that we have to keep renewing all of these documents and paying the fees because that wait has grown far beyond what anyone would have predicted 40 months ago. The form in January (that may or may not have to be pursued for the fourth time) requires a homestudy update. That homestudy update will verify that "yep, they are a year older and yep, they still don't have any children in their home" AND it doesn't even get sent to China to be attached to our dossier.
Both caseworkers have expressed that they have been getting nothing but "screamed at" by their waiting families. We aren't one of those families as this isn't something they can control. We simply explained to both of them that we would appreciate an update now and then, a phone call, an email, etc. Something that shows us that they know we are still waiting. After the fact that our file went (still is) missing, no contact from them makes us nervous.
We are inching closer...31 days ahead of us. Average days referred per month is currently four. We think they will finish March 2006 in October and then it will be on to our month, finally. If you take 31 and divide that by four, that's, roughly eight months... which means that we should get our referral toward the end of April 2010. We are still hopeful that the referral will be before then as April is not as large of a "batch" as March is.