Wait Wait Wait Wait

Wait!, a photo by Óli 270 on Flickr.

Still nothing moving forward to report. I contacted our agency and was told we would receive an email when we are finally DTC. Hopefully next week. Then we wait for China. Then China for more approvals. Then we wait for the USCIS again. Then we wait for China again.

The Steps to TA average stats have lengthened again changing our timeline to travel in the middle of October. But those are just monthly averages and can change either way at any time. I have no control over how long most of this takes. Not anyone to call or harass. No one to poke or prod. Just us knowing that faceless government paper pushers take as long as they take. From two different governments no less. I want so much to hurry this along. Our officer at USCIS told me (while waiting for I800a) that the I800 applicants move to the front of the line. "Once you have a match you will want your paperwork to be done first too." WHAT! We are matched already and Joseph and Jewel are waiting for us. But she said we don't have official matches until her paperwork was done first. Maybe its better that I can't call any of the other officials processing our case. I wouldn't want to say anything to make it take longer.

I try to have patience since I have no choice and think of the families in the non-special needs waiting line. When they had their started their paperwork the wait was around 9 months start to gotcha day. Then all of a sudden China brought the IA program to a screeching halt. Families with a LID of May 2006 just finished getting their referrals last month. Thats 5 years of waiting. China is referring NSN children so slowly that it takes 6 months in real time to take care of families LID in one month. So some of the families with LIDs of early June 2006 will be traveling with us in October. And LIDs of July 2006 will be waiting until 2012. That means that having a difference of 2-3 months in your LID is going to cost you another entire year of waiting, 6 years. Thats after taking in to account the families that dropped out of the program, changed to SN or decided to adopt elsewhere. There is some patience. I'm telling you I don't think I could do it. We were so blessed to find our children.