Life with Ava

Someone who received a referral at the same time we did, although not with our agency, has reported that their TA has been signed and is on the way back to them. Someone else, with yet another agency, is being told to prepare for travel on or around 6 December.

Since our agency does not appear to be of the squeaky wheel type to demand (or even ask for) information, I don't have any idea of our TA status. They also will not guesstimate dates, so at this point I don't have anything beyond my hope that we will travel in December.

The crib should be here tomorrow so we are seeing some indicators that a little one will be living here sometime in the relatively near future. Well, that and the quickly draining bank account, emptying as we start to collect our new bills for travel, is sort of a big clue too.

Zip, Nada, Nothing from our agency today.

Referrals are in the US so we can officially say that the stork has landed. The first December referral has been posted by a family on the west coast. Gene and Rick at lumpia and dim sum received the referral for their 16 month old son! They're anxiously awaiting pictures and I, for one, can't wait to see them.

I've also seen a couple of other referrals out there, but it seems as if most agencies will be notifying families early next week. I'm disappointed of course, but the anxiety was helped tremendously by the two bottles of wine shared with my coworkers this afternoon. It was a long, tough week so we were able to rationalize it with the 5 o'clock somewhere theory.

Even though I know there won't be any more news until Monday I'm still obsessively refreshing RQ every few minutes and lurking on some of the other sites. I really should shut this thing down and try to get some sleep.

Yeah, right. Who am I kidding?

Still no definitive word on the cutoff. I do feel fortunate that we know we're in this batch. I imagine the 12/8er's are going batty now with the are-we-in-or-not agony of not knowing.

I feel a little bit like Charlie Brown today. Supposedly someone got "the call" this afternoon and word spread like wildfire that referrals were here. My heart leapt into my throat and my first thought was that I still haven't prepared my list of questions to ask the social worker when she called us with notification that our referral has arrived. So I called J really quick to see if he was online (he was) and then immediately called our SW to ask if she'd heard anything yet. She was on the other line, so I set to work creating the list of questions I want to ask. Nothing like waiting 'til the last minute you know. I've only had 23 freakin' months to prepare for this call.

By the time I was off the phone with the agency it was already posted that the referral call was a false alarm. The person was notified by their agency that they would be receiving their referral in this batch, but not that it was here. There goes Lucy pulling that football away again. Like Charlie Brown, I'm always willing to believe that this time is definitely it and like Charlie Brown, I got disappointed again.

I did speak with our agency and, as expected, they have no news to share. They're a very conservative agency and do not release any info until it's confirmed. They absolutely do not feed the rumour mill, much to my disappointment and frustration sometimes.

So, what's the current forecast? I have no idea. Some say tomorrow, others say Monday looks more likely for referral packages to arrive. Regardless, I have my referral call questions at the ready. What do you want to bet that I totally forget about them when the call actually comes through?

I was planning to write about Halloween - about how much J loves this holiday and goes all out with the decorations and candy distribution.  And then I was halfway thinking of blogging about scary things - before I  realized that no one reading right now really cares that I'm scared of Sleestaks or that The Exorcist traumatized me so much when I was little that I will still not allow that movie in my house and will cover my ears and close my eyes if a commercial for it happens to come on.

Nope - everyone visiting the site now is here for the good stuff.  Have we heard anything? When will we hear anything? When will we see pictures?

I don't know, people.  RQ is reporting that packages are on the way to agencies.  We don't know if these packages are TA's for the last batch of referrals or if they could (ohmigosh - could this really finally be happening after all this time?!?!) be our referrals. I have not heard anything from my agency yet, however I don't expect to until they have our referral in hand.

Stork status at this time - unknown. Estimated cutoff date for this batch - 12/8/05.

My nerves are shot.  I can't eat - can't sleep - wanna throw up…you get the picture.  This week has been absolutely nerve-wracking.

The rumours are pointing toward a cutoff around the 8th of December.  Even though we knew we'd be in this batch it's still a little shocking to actually see that they're finally going to get to, and hopefully past, our log in date.

Now we're just waiting for some rumours that point to when referrals might be arriving.  So far it seems as if the stork (otherwise known as DHL) hasn't left China with our referral packages yet.

This is officially the longest.week.EVER. (So far.)