Waiting

And now for the hard part... the waiting.

When I talk to people, they seem to have the same basic question that I have: When?

Well, I don't know. Sometime between March and July 2012. Helpful, yes?

Let me see if I can break it down a little better. Right now we have our pre-approval (PA), but what we need is our official approval from China, called LOA. Our PA came on October 14, so we have been waiting 31 days. Our agency checked today, and we are not yet "in-process." Which means absolutely nothing has been done yet. But that is normal for this time around. (Those of you who remember how we got our LOA for Kate in 10 days? You just throw that right out the window - that has never been normal. We were extremely blessed for that to happen.) Right now "normal" can run anywhere between 45-80 days, with outliers running 35-160 days. We sincerely hope to be on the low end of that spectrum.

I have promised myself to not even consider the possibility of getting it before Thanksgiving, and not to worry about it before Christmas. If we don't have it by New Year's? I will be in full out worry mode because it seems either people get it within those 80 days, or they end up waiting about 130-150 days. I do not want to be those people, bless their hearts.

After that? We then send our Chinese approval to the US government, who then do stuff I do not even begin to understand, send their approval to the consulate in China, which is then sent to Chinese government. At that point we wait for travel approval (TA). Right now, the time between LOA and TA is about 2-3 months, with travel usually being within a month after that.

So, to sum up, we hope to travel in the spring. You can cry with me if it ends up being July.

And dear online friends, feel free to ask me questions here, since we can't gush together in person:)