Another Milestone! LID! (and other ramblings)

For those not familiar with the adoption acronyms, I've tried to bold each below to better guide you through what some of us in the China Adoption community know as common everyday language.

Yesterday, we received the email that we are officially LID as of 4/6/07! LID stands for Log In Date: the date that the Chinese government division for adoption (CCAA- China Center for Adoption Affairs) processes our Dossier: compilation of paperwork required by agency and CCAA to request permission to adopt a Chinese orphan, and enters it into their system. We are now officially "in line" in the eyes of the Chinese Government. At this point, we are technically just another dossier in a big stack (click here to see the stacks of dossiers), but our agency attached a letter stating that we are planning to consider a SN: Special needs or WC: waiting child. The way they explained it, this puts our dossier in a different "stack" so it will be easy to find for review when we send in …get ready for it… our LOI.

LOI stands for Letter of Intent. It is basically a letter asking for their permission to adopt a specific WC or SN child. Because we will need to be specific in how we describe our intentions for future care of certain needs, possibly referencing his birth province or characteristics, medical statistics, etc., we need to wait to write it until we make our final decision. I already have a draft going. The core of our intent will be the same regardless of the child or his extenuating circumstances (I almost typed circumcisions just then J… another topic discussed often among those adopting boys from China..."to snip or not to snip").

I've received a number of questions recently about why we are logging in traditionally before considering a waiting child. One person went so far as to tell me in a private message that I was doing it wrong and would only get rejected later. The nerve! Typically processing the dossier first occurs when a family is either asking CCAA to choose a SN child for them (expedited dossier… for another post maybe) or if they start out on the regular route toward a "healthy" child and decide to switch to SN later.

Often, those going the SN/WC routes from the beginning find their child on a list, sign with that agency, then send in their LOI…THEN go through the paperchase toward LID. The reason is simply that we wanted to make sure my medical iffys wouldn't put us in a bind if we didn't make the May 1 deadline. For the longest time, it was really unsure how China would handle the new rules, how strict they would be on some medical and criminal things, and whether they would require LID by May 1 or simply at time of DTC: Dossier to China (when it's officially mailed from the agency). We simply didn't want to find our son, fall in love, and then have something happen late in the paperwork process. It would be too much to handle, so we decided to get the paper related niceties out of the way first and then begin focusing on the little faces…every one of them with a valid reason to be our child… which one… which one… This is the part I hate to love. This ugly feeling of "shopping", yet enjoying reading their backstory. Wondering what their life is like. What it would have been like if they weren't abandoned. Wondering how the mother felt as she set the box down in the middle of the night, peeked in one last time to pin a note, then ran, knowing she would never see her son again, but also knowing she couldn't keep him. Couldn't afford to have his lip repaired or his hand mended. Every time I see those pictures, I imagine how she must have felt. It's just a story I tell myself, but I imagine it must be true at least some of the time. And this is how life goes. It's the scary reality of the world that was never taught in school. I always considered myself smart and even worldly (despite not holding a passport until after 30), however I never even knew about the 1 child law in China until I started researching countries for adoption.

So on a more upbeat note, the call about our LID was a great milestone for sure. It's something everyone in process sits on pins and needles waiting for. For those going the regular NSN: Non Special Needs route, that date represents Day 1 of their wait. When people talk about it taking 'X' months (right now it's sitting at about 24 and rising…hopefully going back down sooner than later), it means that many months from Log In Date….go ahead and forget about the 6 months it took you to get there. That time is dead and gone (did I say upbeat?). For us, it is more or less a milestone plain and simple, but in the scheme of things, it still matters a great deal.

Hopefully we won't be too far off from having access to new non-published Special Needs profiles. Our agency is expecting them any time now and once they are translated, we are high on the list to review them before they go public on their website and newsletter. We're hoping that in the next 30 days or so we'll have sent in our LOI and wringing our hands for our PA: Prior or Parental Approval: CCAA reviews the LOI and dossier and issues official permission to adopt said child. At that point, we'll no longer be parents to one parrot, two "ironman" fish, and a super spoiled French bulldog, but we'll also have a 2 legged variety to brag about! Who whoulda thought?

Special note: I also wanted to tack on a thank you to my husband, who viewed my blog for the first time since October last night. I don't even think he noticed that it's not on MSN Spaces anymore, which he (Microsoft guy) stipulated as a requirement. I went to the dark side a long time ago, honey! (p.s. he also found out yesterday that I have NOT been brewing decaf coffee for the last 12 years. He really thought that he was caffeine free all this time until he went on a trip and suffered withdrawls. LOL!)

As a final unrelated note: Sanjaya Malakar was voted off American Idol last night. I couldn't be happier despite the fact that he is from my hometown of Federal Way, Washington. So sorry for the Fanjayas. I was not one of them. He was cute and had a great audition, but he went downhill from there. I'm rooting for Melinda, but I also like Jordin (She's 17!!! )…and I loved Phil's country song. He would win Nashville Star, or whatever that show is…