Good news/bad news

The Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs recently posted the following information on its web site:

"The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office in June 2005.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before May 13, 2005."

Our agency mailed our dossier on July 13, 2005, which means we were "logged in" in late July or early August. So the good news for us is that all the documents received in July should be in the "review room" now. That means we'll be hearing from the CCAA in the next few weeks if they need any clarification or more information on our documents. After that, the documents move to the "matching room," which is where officials will determine which specific child will be joining our family. So, for the next few weeks at least, no news is good news.

The other bit of good news is that after a bit of a slowdown in processing the adoptions, the CCAA sent out two batches of referrals in January. At the time we sent in our dossier, the CCAA was rather consistently referring children in 6 months. But the pace slowed a bit in November and December, when referrals were made less often and covered maybe two weeks' worth of dossiers at a time instead of a full month's worth. Two batches of referrals in January (with the last one covering three weeks' worth of dossiers) means it's picking up again, though, which is good news for all the waiting families. We rejoice as each child is matched with her family. And our match moves closer with each one! At this pace, we're hopeful of receiving our referral by the end of April, maybe even sooner. So that's great news!

The only bad news is that the CCAA is now shutting down for the Chinese New Year holiday, which means we won't have any more news for several weeks. But hard-working people deserve time off to celebrate with own families, and we're told that the referral pace often picks up a bit after the holiday, so maybe that's not such bad news after all.

Xin Nian Kuai Le ("Happy New Year"), everybody! The Year of the Dog in China is The Year of the Daughter in our household, and that's the best news of all.