August 10, 2006 or August 17, 2010?

Our log in date (LID) for our first adoption was May 11, 2006. This is the date that our dossier, that pile of paperwork we had to do in order to adopt a child, was received in China and logged into their system.

Instead of waiting in the "regular" line to adopt a non-special-needs or "healthy" baby, which was the original plan, we found our sweet Evie on our agency's waiting child list. We came home with Evie four years ago this month, and six months ago we brought home Andy.

If we had not adopted Evie, and instead had chosen to wait for a "healthy" child with no known special needs, we would have received a referral last week, on August 17, 2010, which is when families with log in dates of May 11, 2006 to May 15, 2006 received referrals for their children. The original wait we were quoted was 6-9 months, by the way! How things have changed!

It is amazing to me that we have brought home two children in the same four years that some people have been waiting for one child, and I know several families in my May LID group who ended up dropping out of the adoption process altogether.