Recap

We have a separate website, www.bringcharlottehome.com that has a few entries up until now. But as I find that difficult to work with I've started this blog instead. But to get up to date:

1999 - Started trying to get pregnant
2000-01 Tried infertility treatments, no success
2001-2006 Talked a lot about adoption, decided to adopt from China, gathered information on agencies and attended an information session.
Dec. 2006 - Learned that China was going to restrict prospective applicants to certain criteria effective May 1, 2007. We would be excluded on more than one criteria. We decide that this is the time if we're going to do this. Applied to Lifelink in Rockford for home study services and CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International) in Colorado for placing agency services.
January, 2007 - April, 2007 We scrambled to get our home study done (delayed by DCFS not getting our background checks done), assemble our dossier, get it certified and authenticated and to CCAI by April 13.
April 27, 2007 Dossier logged in at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) office in Beijing. We are officially in line! We now track our position by Log-In Date (LID) of 4/27/07.
Fall, 2007 - We start talking about adopting a special needs child. The conversations start as once in a while, but then are more frequent. The CCAA designates children that here have easily correctable/treatable conditions as special needs. Examples are: cleft lip/palate, club foot, hepatitis B, epilepsy, etc.
February, 2008 - We officially apply to the special needs program. We are told it will be 10-12 months to referral. A referral is when the CCAA has matched us to a specific child and we are given information about her including pictures. We start thinking about Dec 08-Feb 09 as when we will finally at least see a picture of our daughter.
July -Sept, 2008 - We get our USCIS approval renewed. More hoops to jump through but we get approval in early October.
October, 2008 - Checked with CCAI, the special needs referrals they just got were from October, 2008. We're estimating to see Charlotte's picture in February.

So now, we wait. Hopefully that referral will come through in February and we'll probably travel late March or sometime in April, maybe as late as May. Stay tuned. When we have pictures, we'll post them here first!

Jen