The Red Thread and Adoption

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break."

--An ancient Chinese belief

Info on our Adoption Agency, FTIA

We are pursuing adoption through Families Thru International Adoption (FTIA). FTIA is located in Evansville, Indiana and they were recommended by Jennifer's co-worker, who adopted from China several years ago. They have been facilitating adoptions since the late 1980's and the majority of their staff has adopted or are adoptees themselves. It's reassuring to work with people who have walked in your shoes!

For more info, visit their website at www.FTIA.org

Rumor of the Day

Apparently someone in the March 2006 group was asked for more info on their Dossier. If this is true, the CCAA has reviewed documents through March, which means we are 1 month away from at least being reviewed. Not sure how this correlates with referrals...

CCAA updated "Review Room" Info

Adoption documents sent to China before December 31st have now been reviewed. This is good news for us because November documents were recently reviewed a few weeks ago and it took over 65 days to do so. Hopefully this is a sign of the wait time decreasing.

Once our documents are "reviewed", a referral usually follows 1-2 months later. The rumors were running rampant last week that China is finally getting the lead out.

Emma's Room

It took us forever to get the room just right! Dad spent two years making it perfect for our child-to be. There is alot of LOVE in this room...

Emma is a name we have loved for awhile now. It's become quite popular over the last 5 years since our journey to parenthood began, but we decided to stick with the name anyway. Her middle name will be the name she is given in the orphanage, so stay tuned!

It's important for Emma to have something to connect to her homeland and culture, so using a Chinese middle name is how we will honor her birth country. Unfortunately, we will not be able to have information on her parents, which is the down-side of adopting from China.

No news is Good news, so says our agency...

Just an update to where we are on the adoption..haven't moved an inch. Technically we have moved four months. We get weekly posts from our agency, FTIA, and they are indicating an increase in the wait time for a referral. We were told 12 months in April 2006, but my intuition says 15 months until we see her pretty face.

What's a referral?

A referral is a picture of our daughter, info on what province she is living and her medical information. Once we receive our referral, we take the info to Children's Hospital here in Cincinnati and they evaluate her health. After talking to the hospital, we will decide if we want to accept this child and write a letter to China saying as such. After we write the acceptance letter, we will travel to China in 6-8 weeks.