Inching closer to DTC

We've now got our Notary appointment for a week on Monday, I would have preferred it to be sooner but that's the first date we can all fit it in! Once we've done whatever it is we have to do with the Notary (no idea what we do actually!?!?) then we've instructed him to send the papers to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so they can legalise the papers. They will then be returned to the Notary, who will send them to the DfES, who in turn will send them to the Chinese Embassy. They are then once again sent back to the DfES, and their next trip is to China :-) People have been getting their LID (Logged In Date - the date which indicates your place in the queue) very quickly after DTC, in a matter of days mostly, so at least that part of the process could move quickly!! The wait after LID is the depressing bit - I had myself psyched up for 18 months, then I thought I could handle 2 years, probably can stick it out for 3 years - but FOUR YEARS??? I don't know, I really don't know :-( I keep holding onto a glimmer of hope (not based on any facts whatsoever!) that somehow the wait will start to speed up. I'm not bothered about superfast, racing speed (5-6 months it was at one point!!) just a reasonable 18 months ish would be so nice. It would also be great to have some idea of 'when' so that we can plan our lives!!! The lack of information, or even a slight clue to what might happen is so disturbing - how on earth can we plan our futures if the timings are all so up in the air???

I should be feeling really good about getting to this stage in the process, but I just feel numb and wonder if we are doing the right thing?? No answers, just more and more questions unfortunately.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Mr Messy worked at home yesterday, so that he could look after Little Prince while I took Drama Teen to bowling with her friends from Stagecoach. I didn't actually go bowling - I just dropped her off (paid up of course!!) and then went to the Supermarket to do the shopping while waiting for them to finish. The whole bowling trip was thought up, and arranged by Drama Teen all on her own - she's quite the social diva now :-) They all had a great time, when they'd finished it was about half an hour before one of the friends was being picked up by their parents, so Drama Teen stayed with him till his mum arrived, rather than leave him to wait on his own. I thought that was very thoughtful of her, and I'm very proud of her.

When we got home we arranged for Little Miss Sensible to babysit, while me, Mr Messy and Drama Teen went to see the latest Pirates film :-) Don't worry Little Miss Sensible had already seen the film twice with her friends, so she wasn't being left out! The film was great, quite a complicated plot - but who cares?? It had Johnny Depp dressed as Capt Jack Sparrow - what more does a film need?!?! The film was about 3 hours long, so we all had a really late night. At least me and the children could have a lie in, Mr Messy had to be up at 6am to go to work :-(

Rumours

I read the RQ website (see the links) and this month has been full of really positive rumours of a 'huge' batch that will have people needing to be scraped off the cyber ceiling!! But (you knew there would be a but didn't you?!?!) the latest rumours are pointing to another 6 day batch!! At that rate it will take YEARS for us to get to the front of the queue :-( I was so happy with the positive rumours, and hoping (foolishly it seems) that referrals would start to speed up now - the new rules are in place and the CCAA aren't going to be inundated with dossiers, so they could (if they wanted) speed up. Unfortunately, at this point in time, it doesn't look like that will be happening.

The slow down in referrals was SO sudden and precipitous that I can't help but believe that its due to political reasons, rather than a lack of babies needing adoption. It is China's right to chose if/how many of their own child citizens can be adopted to foreigners, but it seems awful that those choices could be being made for reasons other than the child's best interests. Every child where ever they live should have a committed adult to care for, love and raise them - no child should grow up in an institution, there are NO GOOD ORPHANAGES. Even the best institution is not a good place to bring up a child.

So why was there a sudden drop in the numbers of referrals sent out by the CCAA?? I have no idea, only the CCAA knows the answer to that question - and they aren't talking!! My guess is that there isn't one single reason, but a whole load of intertwined circumstances have come together to make this slowdown happen. It can't all be due to more children being adopted domestically (which is the 2nd best thing for the children - to be adopted in their own country and culture) or a slow down in abandonments - the changes happened too suddenly for that to be a realistic reason imho. But it doesn't matter what the reason is, we will get our referral when we get our referral - hopefully it will be sometime this century!!!

OMG :-)

I've just had a call from the DfES and they are sending our Certificate of Eligibility to our Notary Public TODAY!!! They agree with our LA that we DO meet the new CCAA requirements YES - I've been panicking about that, as we are the first ICA to go through our LA. I've rung Mr Messy and he was 'manly' excited - ie he had no idea what a momentous happening this is, but was excited because I told him it was great news!!!

I heard from a friend last night that they have been matched to their new little one and should be starting introductions SOON :-)

Its all good news at the moment and I'm SO HAPPY :-)

Qi

Well we have worked hard all day, with plenty of tea breaks - we are English workers after all :-) Two trips to the tip, huge pile for the charity shop and loads of stuff to get in the attic so my Qi is flowing much better round my house :-) I keep looking round and admiring the empty spaces :-) The dining room seems so much bigger and its great :-) Its starting to feel like my house again, instead of a messy embaressment!! Its a bit sad though that the height of my excitement is tidying up!!! Oh well!!

I've still got one huge cupboard to sort out tomorrow, I'll see if the girls will watch their brother while I get it done. At least next time the social workers come for a visit there will be loads of empty cupboard space to shove things in lol :-) Or 'shock horror' we might not need to hide clutter away - we might actually still have a reasonably tidy house!!!

Mr Messy got all his camera gear out tonight to take the girl's photographs. He has all the backdrops, lights etc to take 'studio' photos and every now and again the girls model for him. Little Prince, unfortunately won't co-operate and usually refuses to have anything to do with it. Its a great pity as he is so gorgeous and I'd love more photos of all three of the kids together to put up round the house.

Spring cleaning madness!!

I decided (in all my wisdom!!) that as the weather was forecast to be raining all this Bank Holiday weekend, that instead of going out anywhere (and having all the hassles of parking) that we'd have a Spring Clean instead!! Mr Messy and the kids just loved the idea - NOT!! But a bit of sulking and pointing out that the house was beginning to look like a pig sty, soon got them agreeing with me.

We've tackled the dining room - that's it just one room! I cannot believe the amount of cr*p we have been storing for YEARS! The recycling boxes are full, we've filled 2 or 3 bin bags of rubbish and got a huge pile to go to the charity shop. I've now got a whole cupboard all of my own - which I've put my scrapbooking stuff into. Perhaps now that its all in one place, and accessible I'll actually get on with doing some scrapbooking!!

I've also come to the radical (for me!) idea of getting rid of my big and bulky desk top computer, and moving to a laptop!! I'll then be able to get rid of the bulky and ugly computer cupboard and just have a little laptop stashed away somewhere.

My other radical idea has met with unexpected family resistance. I want to get rid of the coffee table and not bother getting another one - we don't use it for anything other than shoving magazines on and its pushed up right against the fireguard so doesn't look great, it would be nicer to have the space for Little Prince to play, its broken and scratched to death. However, Little Miss Sensible and Drama Teen want to keep it, because its been there forever (ie before they were born), it was a wedding present (well it was bought with money we were given by our Aussie relatives), and its got sentimental value - they both learnt to walk holding onto it! I can understand why they feel like they do, but holding onto possessions no longer bothers me - so long as I have my family (people) round me things don't matter at all. Not sure I can persuade them of that though - so we are sticking with the coffee table for now!

Tomorrow we need to get some of the rubbish and recycling carted off to the local tip and I've got one more cupboard I want to empty and sort out. I've also got to get Mr Messy to finish the bits of sorting he has started - as he is currently living up to his name and leaving bits and bobs, half sorted piles all round the dining room and kitchen!! Aaaargh!

Over the last few days we've all been chatting more about having another exchange student, and after going through the profiles with a fine tooth comb (we rejected one because she was too religious, another because she sounded too attached to her computer gaming), we narrowed it down to two - one from Hong Kong and one from Germany. I wanted the one from Hong Kong, but everyone else wants the German (they all said we've had so many Chinese Host students that they want something different) - so that's the one we've decided to request. The local co-ordinator is coming to see us next week to discuss it all with us and that's when we'll find out if this one is still available. If she is then we are put in contact with her, and are encouraged to write/email and get to know each other a little before she arrives at the end of August. Hopefully with this girl being from a fairly close (geographically) European country there won't be the extreme differences of culture that we have struggled with, with our other two long term exchange students.

My Favourite Poem

I'm too tired to even think about blogging, so I'll just post my favourite poem.

Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.