CCAA updates and pregnant women

Hi all: It's been awhile since my last post and there are some updates (not good but updates, none the less). I just received notification from my Adoption agency yesterday that CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) has made some major changes in policy regarding foreign adoptions. They state that the supply and demand is not in balance and that they have far less children that are ready for adoption than the requests that are coming in- they also state that adoption requests have literally doubled in the past year. I don't think it is that they don't have "enough" children but they don't have enough children that are "ready" to be adopted. I believe that there are several orphanages in China that are not qualified to have children adopted from them - I prefer not to know the details or specifics of this.

The CCAA is also creating a new organization in China called Blue Skies that will help to get more orphanages "up to speed" (so to speak) which will ultimately enable more children to be adopted - this is all my perception of the notifications I have received.

The new restrictions from the CCAA will take affect May 2007 and are motivated to "decrease" the number of requests that they receive for children so they can better manage this on their end. They want the "cream of the crop" of parents only - some of their new restrictions are as follows:

• No more single parents will be allowed to adopt (this doesn't affect me as my paperwork is already over there).
• No more parents over the age of 50
• No more parents with a higher than 40 body mass index
• No more parents on depression medication
• No more parents with criminal records (I think they used to allow these if they happened in youth - for example a DUI when you were 18 or something - but not anymore).
• No more medical conditions.

There are others but I wanted to list a few. They have pretty much admitted that the wait could go as long as 15-20 months now (I am currently at the 13 month wait mark) which means all that paperwork is beginning to expire which obviously means more $ must be shelled out. It is confusing, to say the least as some docs expire before others but are linked together somehow and one can't be over 6 months old before updating another - it is difficult to wrap my head around this stuff without help! but we shuffle along in hopes that everything will work out for the best. My agency is "estimating" (actually more of a guess than anything else) that I will get my referral in May meaning travel would be in June or July - the absolute hottest months of the year in Southern provinces - with extremely high humidity - will be a dream from a packing standpoint though but I have heard from some that said they would never go back to China during the summer again! I will not complain however as the first trip was done Mid-Jan dead of winter with Beijing (far north) being the first stop - we all froze our proverbial arses off before we got our beautiful little girls. I hope to start in Hong Kong this trip as I spent only 9 hours there (in the middle of the night before flying back the next morning) last time and I still, after 5 years, regret it!

Can not believe that my little girl turned 6 years old on December 2nd. She had a movie party and had 11 kids come to that (cousins and classmates); we all saw Happy Feet which I strongly recommend for kids and adults (a bit propagandish but I'm the one that asked for "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore for my birthday so I didn't mind that much!:-)). Seriously, the movie was fabulous though a bit long (almost 2 hours) but none of the kids got squirmish - I was amazed. Even though there were several trips to the bathroom during the movie. Chloe was on cloud nine the whole time - I think she truly felt like a star. Though she acted like I had been feeding her cotton candy for week!.

Chloe has really been intrigued and fascinated by pregnant women lately - not sure what brought that on. I went in to check on her the other night before I went to bed and she was fast asleep, with her footy pjs on covered in mounds of blankets as usual but she looked strange. I peeled off all the blankets and found that she had stuffed two blankets into the tummy of her zippered footy pjs. She was about 9-11 months pregnant at my estimation and I couldn't help but laugh out loud!.

Best wishes to all for a wonderful holiday and a happy, healthy 2007!!!