China Adoption Forecast (one of my fave sites)says we should expect our referral in June. Every time new referrals come out, they change the prediction, and our date gets a little further away. They have some huge formula that somehow considers a bunch of factors... I don't know, I get lost in all the math on these sites that explain the predicted referral dates!! All I know is that it's taking CCAA approximately 1 month to complete a few days worth of logged in dossiers. Turtle's Pace! They were turning out a month and a half's worth of dossiers each month while we were waiting for KaiKai. I must say, it is kind of cool thinking about going to China in the summer. (I think.) We went in the dead middle of winter the last time and it was a bit harsh. Beijing was almost unbearable for me, especially the day we spent climbing The Great Wall! I remember while planning our trip, we compared the coordinates of the location of Fuling, my daughter's hometown, to somewhere in the states... Panama City, Florida - YAY! We would only need our winter clothes in Beijing, right? Wrong! What I didn't realize was that Fuling was in the mountains, and VERY cold! Well, I couldn't wait to get to Guanzhou, which is in southern China, and where all adoptive families go for the American Embassy appointment. I had only seen pictures of people there in shorts, and was told it was always warm. Well, there was a cold spell the week we were there! The locals told us they get a week like that about once a year. What are the chances it would be the week we were there? Hong Kong was the warmest place we visited, but we still wore winter clothes, just no coats. So, I guess the point in revisiting this is that I am excited about packing warm weather clothes this time! And they will dry a lot faster when hanging in our hotel rooms after washing them in the bathroom sink. Heavy winter clothes (ie jeans, turtlenecks, etc) took forever to dry! I hope the places we end up staying in have air conditioning... or I guess it could be equally unbearable as the cold winter weather!

My daughter woke up today and shared one of her dreams from last night with me... "I dreamed that our baby was the biggest one in the group! I dreamed that we waited so long for her that when we finally got to China, she was a teeenager already!"

I actually got butterflies in my stomach tonight as I read that April 2006 referrals are starting to come in!!! For the last several years, I have told people over and over that we should be going to China within a year to adopt our 2nd child. And as each year ends, the expected date of referral gets pushed back further and further. Many specualtions are discussed all over the web, and in formal and informal adoption support groups, as to why the wait has become so long for Chinese adoptions, but in the end it doesn't matter why. We just have to deal with the disappointment, for we have no control over the matter. We waited less than a year for our 1st child who is now almost 6 years old. (We completed our paperwork for this next adoption when she was just 2 years old - wow!) And fortunately I found out I was pregnant, unexpectedly, just as I was starting to feel hopeless and depressed over this long wait (a little over 2 years after our LID). Our 2nd child, who I always say jumped in line in the birth order, was a saving grace to me. So now we are waiting on our 3rd child, who will probably not be much younger than our son. Life is full of surprises, some of which we embrace with such gratitude. My sympathy goes out to all those mothers who are waiting for their first child.