Progress Update

We officially completed all of the pre-adoption paperwork yesterday and turned our dossier over to our adoption agency yesterday afternoon. Our agency will review all of our paperwork one last time and then it will send it on it's merry way to China on April 1st. Woo Hoo!!! I think that we completed this much more quickly this time around. The magic date that we will be waiting to hear now is our LID date or Log-In date in China. This is the date that will mark the start of the official waiting period, which is currently at about 15-18 months as I write this. Arrgh... Oh well, we have plenty to do to get ready for little miss Sophia Marie.

Once our paperwork arrives in China, it will be in a review process for many months and then will go to the "matching" area where we will be matched up with our daughter. After that, her info will be sent to us and then we wait for a travel date. It all sounds so simple...why does it take so long?

I have faith that it will happen when the time is right. We have been having ladybug sightings again. For those of you that don't know or remember, ladybug's are seen as good luck in the Chinese adoption community. Last time, close encounters with ladybugs seemed to happen at key points along the way. In fact, the night before we received Natalie's referral, a ladybug landed on Phil and his book as he was reading outside. Little did we know that our lives would change forever the very next day as we were finally able to see a picture of our daughter for the very first time. Another memory is mailing off our documents to the San Francisco consulate on September 4th then heading off for a 10 day trip to California. All along the way, we saw ladybugs and were constantly talking about Natalie. I really remember feeling her presence and that she was alive. Her birthday is September 10th... So last Monday a ladybug flew into the car and landed on Natalie's car seat. It's the first time in a long time that I remember seeing a ladybug. We received our 171-H last Tuesday (the last important document from the US government)...I think that little sister is trying to say "hi" to us.