My husband and I are a "family in waiting" once again. But in the fall of 1999 - a hundred years ago - we were a "family in waiting" for the first time, and first time parents-to-be as well. I started this web site then and have been adding to it ever since. Right now it is the beginning of June in the year 2002 and I've just added another new link - that is how fresh and ripped from today's headlines this site it!! But for some reason, I can't hit the delete button on this corny "you are there" account that I wrote about two years ago today, when we were just about to leave for the airport. So if you are here for some actual helpful information, just scroll down to the next horizontal line and skip this sentimental clap trap. If you, like me, like sentimental clap trap, you probably understand why I can't bring myself to erase this little section below.................................

Our plane departs on June 22nd,2000 at 6am. We will land in Changsha on June 26th, in the year 2000 - a day we very cleverly call Baby Day. We will fly to Guangzhou on July 1st and spend my birthday getting Raimi's picture taken for her visa. This qualifies as the best birthday ever.

(Hey, wanna guess what the temperature is in Changsha right this very minute ? Well, you don't have to guess! Just take a for yourself.)

but getting back to the waiting..............

If you are reading this and you are in any stage of pre-adoption from China, you probably know any or all of the following:

It is a process that takes a strong constitution and alot of intestinal fortitude. You may be in the middle of the frustrating "paperchase" and think it will never end. ( It does). You may be waiting out the time it will take from when your documents have been accepted by the Chinese government (DTC) to when you receive that most wonderful of calls: "the referral" (DOR). OR you may already have your referral, and are clutching that tiny picture of your new daughter - and you're still waiting. You are either waiting to be notified of your travel date (DOT) or you have finally received your official date of travel...... but you're still HERE and your child is THERE. You are still waiting.

I'm presenting resources that have helped us as we struggled to get to where we are now - still unpacked at 1AM, doing my sixth load of onesies and pretty much in love with the whole world. We will be leaving in 30 hours to spend sixteen and one half days in and around the Peoples Republic of China. We're going to get our munchkin and bring her home.

Well, that was then. And I so brilliantly observe that this is now. And we are waiting again - this time for Munchkin #2, due sometime at the end of 2002 or the beginning of 2003, or whenever the CCAA is ready to pick up our dossier from the pile of November 2001 DTC's and start making another match that will change our lives irrevocably and irretrievably. The resources below are still very much a part of our waiting process. I hope they can be of some help to you and yours.

• Our story and a letter to our daughter: It's never too early to start embarrassing your children!
  
  
• My account of Gotcha Day : We went to China as regular people and came back strangely transformed.The shocking details are all revealed!
  
  

• As promised, the Questions for the Pediatrician now live here in a printable format.

• The arm of the government in China that handles almost every aspect of "foreign adoption" is the China Center of Adoption Affairs , or CCAA. They make the rules concerning who can and cannot adopt. They scrutinize your dossier. And they are also in charge of the matching process.

  On October 26th,2001, CCAA announced a quota system for adoptive families, effective December 1, 2001.
  
  

• Find out what those wacky guys and gals on Capital Hill  did when they passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. It's a long overdue bill that has made a significant impact on all adoptive families and on how adoption is perceived in our society.
  
  
• Perhaps you'd like to share some of your thoughts concerning legislative matters of the day with the Beltway Boys and Girls. You can contact your Senator or your Congressperson via email. Tell 'em I say "Howdy!". Another one of our favorites are the folks at INS. Drop them a line, too, when the urge strikes you. Regards to the cute fingerprint guy at our local office!
  
  
• Nothing says "I love you" better than the Federal Adoption Tax Credit Law. Read all about it and then call your accountant and show him/her what a smarty pants you are.
  
  
• If you are a member, then you know the important role Families with Children from China (FCC) plays in your family's life. If you are not a member, you can find out how and where to contact a chapter near you on the FCC general information web site.
  
  
• Dumb Frequently Asked Questions: Questions - we get questions! And we also get comments, "compliments" and some insight into what a handful of people consider appropriate conversation. We invite you to email us with your own "I can't believe they just said that!" moments.
  
  
• If you're like me, and I bet you are, you are concerned that your head may explode any at any minute from the experience called International Adoption. Again, RUN - quickly, now, hop! hop! - and check out the list serv/bulletin boards that are available thru Yahoo. Waiting parents can sign up for the Adoptive Parents-China (APC) group. When you return from China ,check out the comprehensive list of all other China-adopt info groups , meticulously compiled by the list owners of RaisingChinaChildren .
  
  
• Statistics: Ralph Stirling, with assistance from the lovely Ann Tembreull, compiles stats from a large sample group of families and faithfully updates them on a weekly basis. They track average wait from DTC to referral; average time of travel after referral; average age of children referred and more.
  
  
• Audio Chinese Tutorial for Adoptive Parents: Haiwang Yuan, website maven and Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University, added a page to his already wonderful audio tutorial of Mandarin Chinese in pinyin format just for parents adopting from China.
  
  
• Two comprehensive umbrella sites that provide tools for learning and using
  Chinese characters and language are http://www.mandarintools.com/ and http://zhongwen.com/ .
  
  
• If you are trying to pick out a name for your daughter or son, the world famous Peggy - Keeper of Names - has a Yahoo group called Names of our Chinese Children, which is a collection of just that. . Go here to find scillions of names -  from Adrian Xian to Zoe Yue Yue.
  
  
• More names that you can shake a stick at can be found at the Social Security Names Distribution site , brought to you by the delightful Office of the Chief Actuary. Here you can read the top 1000 names for the year 2000 as well as the top 1000 names for the 1910's. And they've got all the other years in between, too.
  
  
• And this is the place to find Chinese names (with translations) for girls:, thanks to Mark Tooker, China-Dad and part-time name wrangler.
  
  
• How are parents and children matched? The process is a mixture of bureaucracy, happenstance and magic.That process is refined and finalized at offices in the China Center for Adoption Affairs in Beijing called the matching rooms . How ever the pairings are determined, the results are pretty amazing.
  
  
• Also pretty amazing (and more recent ) are some pictures of the matching rooms taken by a China-Mom who visited the CCAA in the summer of 2000. Check out the entirety of this beautiful site . The rest of this family's story will have you laughing thru your tears and crying thru your laughs. It's good!
  
  
• Mark Tooker is at it again with his My Home Town   site. He initially designed the site so that our children could learn more about where they came from. But you may find it helpful, as an anxious, waiting-to-go Parent, to be able to read about your child's birthplace, place of residence,and to communicate with other families with children from the same area.
  
  
• This is a link on the FCC site that will take you to Asian growth charts. Upon getting your referral and/or when you have returned home and gone for your first pediatrician's visit, this site may be very helpful. Our kids tend to be judged by Caucasian growth standards and the discrepancy can sometimes be alarming to both prospective parents and new parents and their doctors. These charts may allay some of those fears.
  
  
• An even more comprehensive weather checker than the Yahoo site is wungerground.com . You can find the minutiae of a city's weather; check out the layout of the night sky; check on hotels and relevant points of interest in the city(ies) you'll be traveling to.

  BIG NEWS..... the feature that promises to give you the weather history of a certain day *at last* it works! It is a wonderful treat for those of us with children born in China - we can see what their world looked like on the date they were born and include that as one more piece of their birth story.
  
  

• Follow the magically appearing link and find a remarkable five pages of questions to ask your child's nannies, orphanage director or foster parent. They are in English and in Chinese for your edification PLUS there is added a bonus page of instructions in Chinese regarding the use of the disposable camera you may wish to send ahead of you to your child's orphanage or foster home.
  
  
• Planning a trip overseas? Isn't it time you converted.......................your currency ?
  
  
• And speaking of conversions...............when you get The Call and you are scribbling down metric measurements at the same time that you are laughing and crying and calling your best friend, you'll be really happy you can go here to find out how big a 6.8 kg baby really is.

  Just don't try to convert your barleycorns to light-years. It gets weird.

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