Its been two years...

It was two years ago this month that Joe and I submitted our application to adopt. The other day I was looking back at when I started this blog and had to chuckle when I read my 2nd post. Here it is, but shortened up...

Friday, September 09, 2005
Our progress so far...

For those of you who don't know about the adoption process, I'll sum it up in one word....LONG! There are multiple documents... Actually, the paperwork is all very easy, it's just the waiting while the government agencies do their thing that is the hard part.

We submitted our application on August 8th. It's been a month since we applied and we already have most of our documents completed...

If all goes well, we are hoping to be DTC by January 1st. After we are DTC, then our dossier is translated into Chinese and we are LID. At that point, it's about a 7 month wait until we receive our referral, then about 8 weeks or so until we make the long journey to get baby Lauren. It's going to be a long road ahead, but we have an amazing reward waiting for us in China!

Of course, we would have NEVER guessed at the time what kind of wait we were actually in for. The funny part is that we still don't know now, two years later!

My best, realistic guess is that we may see our referral this time next year. I know, it's hard to image this scenario, but this WILL be the case if the CCAA stays at their current pace. If they pick up the pace, we'll see our referral sooner...it's that simple.

It's hard to believe that there is only three months between the current referred through date of 11/21/05 and our LID of 2/17/06, but it could actually take 12 months to get to ours!