Gongxi facai!

Pronounced "gong she fa tsigh".  Or Happy Chinese New Year!  Today is the first day of the new moon; therefore the Chinese celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year.  In China, its a time when people clean their houses and pay old debts to begin the new year with a "clean slate".  It's a time of family gatherings and good food.  They also pay respect to the Kitchen God this time of year by adorning his altar with good food and wine.  Folklore says if the Kitchen God is fed well he will go to Heaven and give a good report and the family will be prosperous and have  good luck for the next year.  Interesting.  Gee thanks "Kitchen God" but its all between me and Jesus, we got this covered.  IF you are truly a Kitchen God, where are you when I'm trying to cook?  Burning toast?  When my pasta boils over?  I could use some help in that department! 
Tonight we plan to indulge in good food and will have dinner at our local Chinese restaurant! This is the year of the Horse and will be OUR year to become a family!!!! So Happy Chinese New Year to all, Gongxi facai!

Text causing "freak-out" moment . . .

Knowing that our agency is expecting referrals, we knew we’d be getting an update but would not be in this group of referrals. However; my Hubby calls me today and says ever so calmly, “Did you get that text?” No, well yeah about AT&T alerting us we are close to our texting limit for the month. “No, did you get the e-mail?”.  No. “Well you need to look at the text and e-mail, I love you”.  Okay that’s it. 

So  quickly I scrolled through my phone to the text, see below, the last text. 

 

 

 

Okay, so in my excitement I think the text says “we are in”, I mean, well, that is the first few words of the text, "you are in" So I think, "oh my gosh we're in, I didn't think we'd be in this group! Larry had copied part of the e-mail from our agency and sent it to me.  Basically the idea was that if "you are in the 11-27-06 LID group" our agency wanted us to notify them immediately if we hadn’t spoken to them recently.  Which I had talked to them on the  14^th and wasn’t exactly sure how immediate “immediately” was.  So I have already freaked out my co-worker from my heavy breathing and “oh my gosh” ramblings.  After she asked me if I was okay and if I was sure I was okay, then I said yeah, I’m okay, this could be a really good thing, I’ll be back”.    By this time, I’m calling Larry as quick as I can, pacing with chest pain and now I have to pee!  He really got a kick out of it, he hadn’t meant to send me into cardiac arrest but wanted me to know the agency wanted us to call. !   

 

 Long story short, I guess this is just practice for next month.  A dress rehearsal if you will.  My co-worker got a very small glimpse of how excited and hysterical I may get in the  next month.  We sort of had a practice “call/alert”  and so it’ll be interesting to see how the real one works out! 

 

I guess we can take another jelly bean out of our jar.  Only one, so we’ll have to split it, but somehow I think it’ll taste very sweet.  We are down to only 5 jelly beans left, (5 log in dates) including ourselves and two of those days are weekend days and no one is logged in.  So, 5 beans to represent 5 calendar days but only 3 LID’s.  Got it, hold on, as the excitement  builds.

Expecting now for 86 months!!!

Today marks our 86 month LID Anniversary.  Larry painted the nursery closet and I watched over his shoulder to tell him where he missed spots.  (I'm helpful that way)Tee Hee  Meanwhile I "played" in all the totes and boxes he got out of the closet and stood around and daydreamed a lot.  We have accumulated so much.  Among the neat things I found, . .  my totebag/diaper bag I bought around 2007 or '08 and a beautiful white collage picture frame my sister-in-law had gotten for us for Christmas 2006.  Very anxious to use these things!   

Wow, my heart is "jumpy" !

I dont really know how to explain it but I just read a message form our face book  group and my stomach and heart feel a little quivery/jumpy, fluttery, wiggly, and lots of other things I cant really describe.  I want to  squeal and cry at the same time.  Whoo wee!  Why? You may ask.  Well we didn’t just get a referral but the group in front of us did, and that means we should be NEXT!!!!!!!

Unless they break up the next five days into two groups, which China has done before and they have every right,  but if not then we are NEXT!!! (Okay so now I’m sobbing and shaking.)   I have waited nearly 86 months (it will be on Monday) to write these words.  I cant explain to you how this makes me feel unless you’ve experienced  it yourself.  My eyes are blurred as I type and I am thinking way faster than my fingers can keep up. 

I spoke with our agency a couple weeks ago and our referral counselor had said she (tear just rolled of my chin) that she expected the next group with an LID of Nov. 22^nd would come at the end of January or first of Feb and she would be contacting us  around the first to middle of  February. AND she expected we should have a referral by March.  April at the latest but I didn’t acknowledge the “April” part of the sentence.  So with all the scuttle on our face book group saying the 22^nd referrals have been mailed then families will likely be called /notified early next week and that’s right on target with our counselor’s projection. Then if all goes as expected then we should hear from her in the next couple weeks.  THEN if all that falls into place then we are likely to get our “CALL” in March.  (tears have stopped but nose is running profusely).  . . . Sorry for all the details but you cant recreate the mood when reading this so I’m trying my best.  Just picture me all weepy but happy and you’ll get the picture! 

Marching toward March!

We talked to our agency Tuesday evening, the 14th, and our projections were confirmed. We were told that we will likely receive our referral in March. (Insert squealing and dancing around). Late December the CCCWA referred children to families logged in from Nov. 18th through the 21st.  So our date of 11-27 is creeping closer. 
We have started working on the nursery some, scrapbooking over 7 years of memorabilia,  and  trying to re-organize our house and complete little projects.  All this while day dreaming of our Little One in China and balancing things so we can maintain focus on our daily work and responsibilities.  Shew, that's a lot!

We bought a baby bed!!!!!

So excited, need I say more.  We weren't looking but just saw one and decided, that's the one!  We got an awesome deal and it was just the type of bed we'd been looking for and were hoping to find.  Pics to follow! 

So much on my mind . . .

there is a very slim chance we could get a phone call, well, "The Call" tomorrow from our agency.  For those not in the adoption world, this is the phone call that all prospective adoptive parents wait for.  For us, that would be 85 months, or just over 7 years!  Imagine awaiting a phone call for that long!  To tell you the magnitude of this, Larry just asked me what time it is in Spain.  Why Spain? Well because we have friends in our face book group from Spain and they are ahead of us in the time zone and if someone from there is getting a call about now then that means tomorrow we could get a call, get it, complicated I know.  Why in the world would we be worried about what time it is in Spain when we're adopting from China!  Hmm, there you have it. 
Back to "the call" . . . when we get this long awaited call it will include info about our baby, like the sex, birthdate, the location, ie., foster care or orphanage.  You see it would be the equivalent of delivering your baby and the doctor announcing, "congratulations, you have a fill in the blank". So that's why the call is so important and it's the first step in the referral process in which we get to announce our child's info to our family and close friends. 
For months, (well every month since we've been waiting), when it gets close to referral time I watch my e-mail like crazy and every on-line group we're part of as well as scour the internet for hints of information regarding referrals and how many days worth of LID's have been processed. Ironically this time, as we've gotten so close, Larry has been the one tracking face book and e-mail.  He's been texting me at work any updates.  He's suddenly obsessed and I've been too sick to realize,and busy too, that I wasn't expecting referrals yet.   In the past, I always knew we were never close enough to be included I still watched (like a hawk)!  It was an exciting time and it was always good to see families being connected to their children for the first time.  The number of babies referred and families matched always gave reassurance that we were one step closer.  Seeing others' dreams come true always encouraged us. 
Now we are so close. It's unlikely to be tomorrow but in the next couple months we will get to see the first glimpse of our little one via an e-mail photo. 
So what do we do to prepare our hearts for this?  I ask myself, what can I do? It's always seemed so far away and now our Little One is within reach and we may see her picture in the coming months. I awoke early thinking about how we'd share the news and with whom first.  We have circles of friends that have walked this path with us and some that are closer than family and some that understand on a much deeper level than others.  But to make it fair and uncomplicated, everybody will hear it from us eventually and we cant guarantee they wont hear it from someone else first.  We live in a small area and news travels fast! 
So will it be a boy or girl? Light or dark skin? Fine or coarse hair? How old? What province? Foster care or orphanage?  Oh so many questions.   Stay tuned!