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Whoa! I skipped a Month.

What happened to March? I was saving the most recent predictions and couldn't find March, then I realized I didn't make one! I have beeen so busy the past few months and since RQ has been away, I haven't been checking in on the adoption scene.

This month's referrals came out on April 9th, 2007. Yes, I'm a week late. ONLY 2 DAYS WERE REFERRED. October 25th, 2005 & October 26th, 2005. News from the Agency was that the employees at the CCAA were pulled into meetings to discuss the new rules (starting May 1st, 2007), so they were unable to match as many Babies to Dossiers.

Rumors say that the next batch will be before China's holiday (May 1st - 7th).

Revised Predictions: Remember, these are based on LIDs matched and not on the number of Dossiers logged in. I will do that prediction next.

Another Round of Referrals? Yes, I'll take a double.

This month has flown by! This weekend will be our first weekend home since the beginning of the year. We went to Disney World for a week with my sister and niece, age 2. We also met up with some friends of ours who have two boys, ages 5 and 1. We had a blast, but came down with nasty colds at the end of the week so we lost a couple of days. It's good to be home, but what's up with this weather? It was even cold in Disney. I'm already counting the days until Spring. At least we have Mardi Gras to keep us a busy during February. First parade is tomorrow night!

Okay, so on to Adoption talk...
I think we're almost DTC...within a month, hopefully. Agency said that they received the last I-171H for our group 3 days ago and sent it off for authentication (which I think takes about 3 weeks). This month's batch of referrals made it through October 13th, 2005. One of the weeks in October was a holiday, so there were no LIDs during that week. I adjusted our "estimated LID" by adding a month. Previously, I was estimating the second half of February 2007, but now I'm estimating the second half of March 2007.



I hope to be posting that we are DTC very very soon!!!!

The Newest Referrals are In!

This time, our agency received referrals, which is very exciting. We even had a surprise BOY! I wonder how often that happens? I've seen people who request boys receive girls. I could be wrong, but I would say boys are more rare than Twins. Maybe I'll start keeping track of the number of blogs that I come across that are NSN boys and twins. It would be interesting. I did hear of a couple receiving Twins in France this time.

Based on the recent cut-off date of September 27th, 2005, here are our latest estimates:




Still waiting for more families to receive their I-171Hs so that we can be DTC. Everything else has already been authenticated and translated.

Waiting for the newest referrals

Referrals should be coming in soon and this is the first batch in a long time that our agency has a group that is expecting babies. This group was logged in on September 12, 2005. Their wait from LID to referral will be just under 16 months.

RQ has recently released a new poll. I love data. This LID poll goes through September 2006. The results are lumped into months rather than days, so it took me some time to tease them apart.

My first assumption is that the rate of the past two months of LIDs referred will stay constant. ie. it took X number of days to include Y number of referrals in a batch. This assumption is most likely incorrect, but, since I'm not psychic, it's the best foundation to start from.

My second assumption is that the same percentage of people who were LID recently took RQ's poll as the number of people LID a long time ago. ie. the longer you're in the process, the more likely you are to know about RQ and her poll. I started to work on the increase of people per month to her site to artificially inflate the numbers as they go out into the future (since RQ recently gave us some data about the number of unique viewers, hits, etc. on her site by month), but I realized that there are too many factors that increase communication and it wouldn't be very reliable. Instead, it's easier to just look at the data and know that the further you go out, the more optimistic the dates.

Oh, I forgot, I have one more assumption (geez with all of these assumptions, the outcome can't be too reliable, but ... it's fun, and it will be fun to see the pattern over time, especially since we're in for a 2+ year wait). Okay, my third assumption is that referrals are sent out once per month, so when I say "January 2007", I mean the referrals that come out the beginning of that month, or sometimes the end of the previous month. So, if the CCAA decides to do two batches in a month, or one batch in 6 weeks, it will throw it off. However, I would imagine that they still match roughly the same number of babies per month, regardless of how quickly or slowly they do it.

So, here's my latest predictions based on RQ's poll ending 12.22.2006.



The RED dates are those that include one of our agency's groups. The August 2008 referrals I made up because I ran out of data, but I wanted to squeeze another group on the table.

By creating this prediction, I'm not discounting my previous predictions, I'm just adding more data to the mix. The CCAA controls how many babies they match. There are so many factors that affect this, that there are forums to discuss the speculations. I would post my belief of why the CCAA has slowed down here, but I'm not ready to turn this blog into a forum of sorts. For now, I enjoy sitting back, watching the recent changes and how they are affecting the timeline.

Almost There...

This afternoon we arrived home from Glen's family's house, where we celebrated Christmas, to find a big surprise in our mailbox... our I-171H!!! I can't believe it! We are very surprised. So now we wait for others in our agency to receive their I-171Hs to form the next group. The groups usually consist of 4-5 families and I know that at least one other I-171H has already been received. After the group is formed, our I-171Hs are authenticated and our Dossiers are sent to China.

Happy New Year!!!

Too Cute

This is my two and a half year old niece who is loving Christmas!

The Latest Referrals are Out

The CCAA updated their website around 5:00 this morning. The cut-off date is September 8, 2005. This represents the same number that they referred last time. Here is our updated prediction:






Since our Dossier has not even gone to China yet, I am basing these predictions on a LID between 2.15.2007 and 3.15.2007. My previous predictions were based on a LID between 1.15.2007 and 3.15.2007.

We are currently waiting for our I-171H. Our fingerprints were completed on September 14th, 2006, but our Home Study did not leave for Atlanta until October 2nd, 2006. Atlanta is currently taking 12+ weeks to issue an I-171H. Given the holidays, I am going to lean toward the +++ side of this estimate.

In addition to attempting to predict our referral date, I also enjoy trying to predict the next cut-off dates. I have broken these predictions down two ways; based on the past 5 months and based on the past 1 month. I am using RQ's polls to count how far the LID cut-off date will go. This is way more reliable than the number of days matched and I wish RQ would post a poll that includes all LIDs. The variance would of course increase the further out you go, but I think you could still get a better idea of what's ahead compared to number of days matched. Since the poll stops at the end of October, you can see where I had to stop counting, but the cut-off date should really be beyond October. I just can't tell how far. I have also included the Group numbers of our Agency so that I can see where they fall in my predictions.