February 9th is the cutoff!

Well CCAA sent out referrals in a record 22 days since the last batch and they covered up to February 9th! Whoo hoo 9 days!!! And lets not forget that they had the olympics during this time and they were not all working. Good job CCAA. So I am no longer thinking negative and only thinking positive. I know some people in adoption land may read this and think that I have totally lost my mind but anything can happen. Who of us would have thought we would still be waiting almost 30 months later when we were told 6 months? So what if they decided to do what they said and start sending out 15 days of LIDs at a time? What? Yep that is what got me stressed out yesterday! What if? Well I will tell you what if,after jumping for joy , I will be beyond stressed because there is so much left for us to do and buy before Jaden comes home! I dont know what we will do! The kid has clothes,blankets a place to sleep and toys but that is it! We also have to do our homestudy update since we moved, its paid for but we have to schedule a time for them to come. Our fingerprints expire in November!(yhea that is right for all you non adopters your fingerprints expire every 15 months, who knew!) We gotta find a house sitter for 2 + weeks. Thank god for my parents who will keep our three heathens while we are gone, they will get to take a little doggie vacation! And a shout out to my parents for helping me get the things we cant seem to find for our trip up here. They are trying to keep me from being so stressed!
Now I know chances are it could still take them awhile to get through the 34 days of LIDs we have left for our referral but I have a feeling or maybe just a hope that it will be sooner then I think. I have always said I will have her picture for Christmas, of course I thought it would be Christmas 2006 not 2008!
So for this month I am thinking positive and stressing myself out. Who knows what next month will bring!

Goodbye January Hello February

Yep that is right. January is finally history! CCAA has sent out referrals to 1/31/2006! So we are now onto February! I was worried that CCAA would not send out any referrals this month due to the Olympics but I was wrong. I know we still have a while to go but I am looking on the bright side. February is a small month, only 28 days and then we are 3/15/2006 so if you count that up it is only 43 days of LID left for us. WOW! That feels good to say.
I have talked to my agency and they feel like we will not have to renew our I171H that expires 4/4/09, they say we should be home by then. Yhea! I feel very good about that.
We finally have that spark back in this adoption. Once again we are nervous about all that needs to get done before we go to China. I mean come on we have had 3 years to prepare for this but we are still not ready. There is so much left to do. So much shopping to do for us and of course for Jaden.

Pictures of the Nursery

Wow two post in two days!!! After the serious matter of yesterday's post I thought I would lighten the mood and show you pictures of Jaden's nursery! I love it! We are not completely done with it. We still have to put up the blinds which we bought this weekend. Curtains, pictures, and we need to buy a dresser for all the clothes that will not fit in the closet. Whoops! You probably cant tell in the pictures but on the bottom the purple is actually stripes. Same color just different finish. So what do you think?

Adoption is not our 2nd choice and Where has the excitement gone?

Ok, so I am not the kinda person that shares my feelings well to alot of people. There are a few people that I feel I can really express myself too and they know who they are and how thankful I am.
Lately I have been very feeling down about the adoption. We have both lost the excitement in the whole process. So I thought I would blog about it and see if that helps. Here goes.
Don't get me wrong we are still very excited about bringing Jaden home.We still know we are doing what is best for us. I just feel like the excitement is gone. I feel like people think that this is just something we have made up and it is never going to happen. In the beginning everyone we told was so happy, now it is not mentioned. Do people think we are crazy? We are not!
Sometimes I also don't think that people think when they say things to us, or they don't think we overhear somethings being said. Please understand that we are going through a very hard time even though we try not to show it to anyone. Know that we are happy for all our family and friends that have children or who are going to have children. But also understand that we are hurting for our baby that we do not have. The baby that we have no due date for. The baby that we were told we would wait only 6 months for and have now waited 28 months with no end in site. The baby that will never see her first nursery because we were transferred during this long wait. The baby that right now is being cared for by someone thousands of miles away who we do not know.The baby that we pray for every night and hope that someone feeds her and holds her and kisses her. The baby who will take her first breath, her first bottle and have her first smile without her forever family there. Understand that those are things we think about everyday. She is never away from our thoughts and prayers. We know that we are going through this for a reason and the reward will be great. But understand that we have our down moments and certain things can be said to us to make those moments worse.
Also understand that our daughter will be Chinese and that we are embracing her culture and her people. We do not want to hear negative comments regarding this. We do not want to hear negative comments regarding her birth mom because in our eyes she is giving us a great gift. One that we are sure she did not want to give but had no choice due to rules she must follow. We know that we will be thankful that she left her daughter somewhere were she would be found and not somewhere that she would die. We will never be able to tell her how thankful we are.
Also please know that some holidays will be hard for us. We are happy to spend time with family but remember that our family is not complete until she is home. It is hard to be happy when a part of you is missing.
Also know that this adoption is not our second choice. Do not feel sorry for us because we can not have biological children. To us a child is a child. Our blood may not flow through her veins but our love will flow through her heart. We did not go through years of infertility treatments only to then decide we would adopt. We did no treatments before our decision. And only tried it for one month well into the wait and then decided it was not for us. We don't have a need for a familiar face in our child. We just want the baby that God meant for us. We know that she is in China.I do worry that she will be treated differently by some people because she is adopted. If that happens we will do what is best for our family.
So please understand what is going on with us. Please think of our feelings before you say something. And please never say that you understand what we are going through unless you have gone through adoption or are going through it now.

Now I hope that I feel better after I have poured my heart out. I promise that my next post will not be so down!

Back Home & Referrals!

Well we are back from vacation and we had a wonderful time! We hated to leave but we had to get back to the real world. We ended up buying a little to much so we had to buy an extra suitcase! I just saw to many things that Jaden had to have for her room. Since her room will be in Disney what better place to get things then Disney World? Really because this will be her 2nd nursery I pretty much had everything but we did get a few more stuffed animals and 2 outfits!
Anyway in other news referrals seemed to have come out today. This was a very depressing batch of referrals, they only covered 1/10/06-1/12/06, 3 whole days! That leaves 61 LIDS until our date of 3/15/2006, one week of that is Chinese New Year and no one was LID in that time. I personally feel like we will get our referral in December of 2008, I know some people dont think that way but I do. You have to have some kind of hope to make it through this wait from hell. I have decided I am going to go ahead and start painting Jaden's room next week. I think I will feel better once I see a nursery again.