Today was a full day. Jeffrey had orchestra at the school in the morning, MB, Mickey and I had "coffee club", Jeffrey had a field trip with the 5th grade class he attends gym/music with, and tonight my friend Michelle organized a shopping event/adoption fundraiser at the store Hot Mama in the mall. More to come on that- it was so great!!
Meanwhile, all day I was an absolute basket case inside- and so were the kids! You see, our dossier was picked up from the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday(the Embassy was closed on Monday and Tuesday due to a Chinese holiday) and then overnight-ed to our agency that same day(cost: $57 to overnight it people!!- how crazy is that???). We also had to overnight new cashier's checks to our agency the same day(long story but we sent the wrong amounts the first time which ended up being kind of a big deal since each check costs $5 and then we had to overnight it ($20) so that our coordinator got the correct ones in time). Boo. We got over it. Stuff happens, right?
Now, our agency only mails dossiers to China on Fridays(not sure why, but that's the deal) and so it was VERY important to us that all of our stuff got to her by Thursday so she had time to make some copies, look it over and make sure everything was in order. Everything got there on Thursday. YAY!
There was always an off chance that our dossier would not get mailed on Friday... since she said she "should have enough time" to get it ready. And what if there was something amiss? So that is why we were so nervous all day today. I checked my email 600 times at least, waiting to hear from her that it was sent. The kids kept asking me if it was time to celebrate yet. "Are we DTC, are we DTC?" is all I heard all day(that didn't help my nerves). I started doing time zone figuring in my head... our agency is in CA so 2 hours behind... what if she goes home at 4pm today since it's a Friday? What if she never emails us to let us know, assuming that we were assuming it would just go out? I already emailed her once in the morning, should I do it again? Would she hate me if I did? Is she home sick? Should I make John call? If so, what time? I decided for the sake of all of our sanity, that John would have to call her at 3:30 her time. That seemed safe to me. So he called... and she answered... and said yes, it was mailed(like it was no big deal! ha!!) In the background MB was yelling "did she mail it? did she???"... oh my goodness- I wonder what our coordinator thinks of this family that emails her almost everyday(I'm exaggerating- but not much) with a million questions and screams like a nutcase over any news. ugh... Anyway- WE ARE DTC! WE ARE DTC! WE ARE DTC!!!!!!
This means dossier to China. And THAT means that ALL the paperwork that we have been working on for 6 months, sending all over creation for notarizations, seals, and approvals, has FINALLY been put all together and mailed off to China!!! This is a big milestone in the process. HUGE. And we are over the moon happy about it. I was shaking and felt like a nervous wreck after we found out though- maybe because it suddenly felt so REAL, ya know? Hard to explain...
So now what? We wait to hear from China that they received it(happily, I don't think there's any holidays this coming week) and then we are officially LID. Another HUGE milestone. It stands for "log in date"- which is a really big deal because we cannot be matched with a child until we have our LID. The sad news is that the next shared list(the list that only comes out once a month from China with all the new children that are available for adoption) is probably coming out this coming week. I'm sure before we can even hope to be LID. So that stinks. But maybe, just maybe there's a chance we could find our daughter or be matched somehow this coming month??? Nothing is impossible, right? I'm not getting my hopes up though... even though that is what our heart's desire is, we realize that it's a possibility that we could be waiting months for a match(our agency said it could be 3-8 months). I'm assuming that's worst case scenario- ha! It's been known to happen faster- our coordinator is actually known for being a really fast matcher- so we'll see!
It all depends on so many things...
We will keep you posted though! So again, coming up next in this process is:
LID and then: our baby girl! I can hardly believe we've come this far!
