A new list came out Thursday night / Friday morning, and apparently it was a big list.

I’ll do a new “SN When” post this weekend.

Congrats to everyone matched off of this list!

As many of you figured out yesterday, different USCIS offices do different things. The 18 months is supposed to go from expiration date to expiration date, but at least two offices were doing it based on when they got the new one approved instead, and since they allowed a long period between request for a new I600A/I171H, and the homestudy, families had figured that out and were stretching the time as much as possible. So, they are creating the new rule about homestudies being submitted when the request is submitted, or no later than 30 days after.

The USCIS FAQ page about grandfathered I-600A forms can be found here.

There are some questions about how many times families are going to be able to keep requesting/filing to be grandfathered. There is one agency telling their families they can no longer file outside of Hague, that they must now use the new forms. But I have yet to hear of a family being told “no” by the USCIS when they request or file for a new I-600a/I-171H.

China can stop allowing it at any time, though. That’s pretty clear, that they can require all paperwork to be Hague compliant if they choose, but that so far they’ve allowed those who started out non-Hague to remain that way.

For those deciding whether to just let everything expire or not… the downsides to letting everything expire are 1) it’s harder to qualify under Hague, there are things that can disqualify you under Hague that were fine under the old rules, 2) if you’ve lived in a bunch of cities and states then it can be nearly impossible to get the documents needed from every local jurisdiction you’ve ever lived, and 3) travel time between referral and travel is one to three months longer under Hague than it is under the old paperwork. There may be more downsides, those are the ones I’m aware of.

With that being said, I can see that it would be pretty freeing to not have to deal with all of that paperwork in the interim.

Also, no one knows for sure how long the USCIS (or China) is going to allow people to grandfather in under the old paperwork. It would be a pain to have kept up with all of that paperwork and then be required to move to the new Hague processes anyway.

The first rumor is that the CCAA is preparing to match. If you don’t know what that might mean then you may want to check out the “How the Matching Room Works” link in the right hand column under “Important Posts”.

The second rumor is that the USCIS plans to begin requiring that home study updates be submitted along with I-171H renewal requests, or at the most, within 30 days of the renewal request. I don’t believe they’ve given a date that they will begin requiring this, it sounds like they are just putting it out that it’s going to be coming. If anyone out there has more information on this one, please share.

I don’t have to add something green to the site, it’s always green! :)

The time change is still kicking my derriere. I can’t go to sleep at the right time at night, and then I’m having to resort to (gasp!) caffeine in the morning in order to be functional. I try to reserve caffeine for when I really need it, and I’m sad to say I’ve needed it every morning this week. I refuse to allow myself to get back into that habit, but it’s been really hard to wake up this week.

RK has been up and out of the house before the rest of us wake up this week, and he’s been getting home after the girls are in bed. Meaning I’ve been waking to an alarm, which hasn’t helped the whole morning thing, either. Monday morning when I went to wake TwinkleToes, she wasn’t in her bed. My heart literally stopped beating. I looked around her room, but no TT. I said her name once softly, no answer, then I said it a good bit louder. I heard GlitterGirl from her room say softly, “She’s in here.” I walked into GG’s room and sure enough, little TT was sound asleep in her sister’s bed, curled up against her looking like a little angel. GlitterGirl said TT came into her room and woke her up in the middle of the night and she couldn’t get her to stop talking so she dragged her into bed and rubbed her back until she fell asleep. I asked GG why she didn’t come get us and she said she just wanted to go back to sleep, and that seemed the fastest way for her to get back to sleep.

I had a talk with TT about how she should come to RK and I if she woke up, but she said she wanted her sister. Everyone has stayed in their own beds the rest of the week, so maybe it was just a fluke.

RK had checked on them before he left, and he asked me that night why TT was in GG’s bed. I explained it to him, and we agreed if it kept happening we’ll put the dog downstairs at night again so we can put the motion sensor back up in the hallway. We took it down a while back, and have only been using it when we, ummm, fool around, as a warning that a child is up and may soon have their ear pressed to our door – but there’s no reason we can’t put it up long term again so we’ll be awakened any time a child comes out of their room. Well, except for the dog – he won’t be at all happy that he’ll be stuck sleeping downstairs again. Hopefully it won’t be necessary, though.

And I’m much happier with the weather. It’s not exactly warm yet, but it’s no longer bitterly cold, either.

Every once in a while I get some rumors that are really more of a discussion item than something we can use for analysis. I’ve got a few of them now.

The first comes from several sources, and when I read all of them and try to make it into one cohesive rumor I get that the CCAA does not know how many domestic adoptions took place in previous years, nor do they have any way of knowing how many are happening this year. The provinces each have their own rules for domestic adoption and the federal government at this time does not regulate domestic adoption – with the exception of domestic adoptions within Beijing, which the CCAA is in control of. The CCAA has been working to try to get a handle on domestic adoption nationwide, but it’s not really working out so well for them. The provinces don’t like to give up control to the federal government, and pretty much won’t unless someone strong arms them into it, and no one is doing that right now. With that being said, the CCAA feels that domestic adoption has grown a great deal, but they don’t have specific numbers.

Two sources say that the CCAA currently processes about 400 to 500 adoptions a month. One source says special needs children comprise more than half, another source says special needs varies from 30% to 50%.

Several sources give totals for number of children referred in 2009, but none agree. I’ve seen more than a half dozen figures, all falling between 4,600 and 5,800. All supposedly from the CCAA, and all giving some number between 30% and 50% when discussing the SN percentage of total.

Backlog figures of 12,000 are still be bandied around. Though two agencies report the CCAA admits that with the number of families that have been dropping out, they have no idea of the actual number at this time. If we believe that 12,000 number (I don’t), and if we believe somewhere around 2400 NSN babies a year are being referred (which at this point I think is an optimistic number for future years, unless the CCAA has hit bottom)… then we’d be looking at five more years to get through the backlog. One agency is saying the CCAA told them they should be through May of 2007 within two years time. They would need to do more than two weeks of LID’s every month in order to make that happen, and while I think that’s possible to see two weeks of LID’s at once for a few stretches here and there, I don’t see it happening every month on average. Not unless the CCAA thinks they are going to be able to increase the number of babies available, and there are no rumors (none, nada, zilch) that say the number of babies available is expected to increase.

One would think that as families are removed from the CCAA software application that the software would give updated backlog figures. But apparently, that’s not the case. Of all of the backlog rumors I’ve received, I think the one that says the CCAA can only estimate the figure at this time is probably the most accurate.

And for the final rumor… before I put this out there, let me say that although I’ve seen it a few times, I believe there is only one original source, and that the several times I’ve seen it are people who heard it from the one original source. I’m keeping my eye on this one to see if we see it from other sources, and to see if we see numbers over the next year or two that may back it up, but for now I’m not going to give it a whole lot of weight. With that being said: this rumor says that the CCAA wants to bring the gender imbalance of adopted children closer to balance every year. This next part tends to change a bit, (kind of like the telephone game) but it sounds like the CCAA wants to see an increase of boys to girls every year – some say at least one percent a year, some say a percentage to be determined each year. Once that percentage is decided upon, if there aren’t enough boys being adopted then they will decrease the number of girls available so that their percentage works out by year end. Again, I believe this one comes from a single source, and I will wait to see if we see it from other sources before giving it a whole lot of weight.

I am reporting these rumors because that’s what I do – report the rumors and let you decide what you want to do with them. But I also try to give my opinion on the rumors, and I do not see anything here that should be used as some sort of absolute in figuring something out.

It’s only been about eight months since I did this, but I’m getting questions that tell me we have a lot of new people who haven’t looked around to see what is offered… so I guess it’s time for me to do this again.

At the top of the left hand column you’ll find links to my last ten blog entries.

Also, in the left hand column, if you scroll down just a bit you’ll find links to the last twelve comments made.

When you view a post, if you want to see other posts that are similar then take a look at the categories I’ve put the post into. Click on the one that makes the most sense for what you are looking for, and you’ll get posts I’ve put into that category. Analysis gets the posts where I’ve analyzed things (including the Projection and When posts), Adult Adoptees gets the posts where I’ve talked about adult adoptees, etc. There is also a complete list of categories near the bottom of the right hand column, you can click on any category to take you to the posts in that category.

In the top right hand column under Site Navigation you see a link that will take you to a page of the rules for people who wish to comment. Nothing draconian, just basic manners.

Next you’ll see a link to the Forum. What is a forum? Well, the part you’re looking at now is called the Blog. In the beginning the blog was where all conversation happened. Then as our little community grew we really needed a better place to talk, so along came the forum. Many rooms of the forum are viewable by anyone, but we have a few rooms that are only visible to those who are registered – nothing top secret, but sometimes it’s nice to talk about things in a spot that the search engines aren’t going to index. The forum has also turned into a nice spot for people to continue to come to once they are home with their babies. We’ve somehow managed to bring a lot of levelheaded people together who can have some pretty intelligent conversations – the forum provides a spot for us to continue to have a place to talk even after we are home. There are serious threads and fun threads, there are threads about adoption related parenting issues and then there threads about just plain old parenting issues (potty training, attitude, handling homework, etc.) You’ll find the rules for the forum stickied to the top of the General Discussion area, please look through them before you start posting. Again, nothing draconian, just some guidelines put in place so it can continue to be a pleasant place to hang out and talk.

I should note, again, that for some reason comcast will not deliver mail from chinaadopttalk.com to their subscribers. If you have a comcast.net address, you’ll need to use a different address in order to sign up for the forum and blog. You can try complaining to comcast if you want, I’ve tried but I haven’t gotten anywhere. Perhaps if paying customers complain they will do something.

Continuing down the top right of this page you’ll see two links for book recommendations. One page is for things relating to Adoption, Parenting, and China. The other page is for fictional book series that I enjoy, listed in the order that I personally like them. Most are Urban Fantasy, but not all. I haven’t updated the page for sequels in a while, I should probably do that.

Next you’ll see the CCAA Updates and Referrals page. This page lists when referrals have arrived and through what dates for as long as I’ve been keeping track. There is also a spreadsheet listing when the CCAA page has been updated.

Next you’ll find a calendar, and then there is Contact Info. I don’t respond to email, so if you want a response you’ll need to PM me in the forum. However, I’ve had to stop responding to as many PM’s as I’d like to be able to, as well, as some weeks I get well over 150 PM’s. Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT complaining about the volume, I really appreciate rumors coming to me and I don’t mind that I might see the same rumor 40 times. In reality, the more times I see the rumor, the more I can be sure of the wording of the rumor. So please continue to PM or email me any rumor you have, just understand that there is no way I can respond to every PM. And right now I’m a bit behind even in the ones I will be responding to.

After the Contact link comes the very important FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). If you have not read the FAQ, please do.

Next is a link to the GlitterGirl and TwinkleToes blog, which I’ve been sporadically posting to. Then you’ll see the very important Poll Results page showing the results of all of the Polls that I’ve put up that have been closed. Each is marked at the bottom to tell where it came from and/or the date the poll closed.

Last in this section we have a guide to the Rumor Ratings I sometimes use to rate the rumors, and a scorecard I created to keep track of R4 and R5 rumors. I haven’t updated it with the rumors from the most recent cycle, I’ll try to get that done soon, too.

Next you’ll see a link to posts I’ve made that I feel are of interest to people across time. Articles about how the matching room works and when adoptions are final in China and what I thought the backlog was the last time I figured it. A new entry in this section is the “Series Listings” section. Subjects like Chinese New Year and Adult Adoptees and Baby Gear. You can find all of the posts from those series by following the Series Listing link under Important Posts.

The next section is for Links outside of this site. First the link for Bright Outlooks, followed by a couple of CCAA pages of interest. If you haven’t read through their Requirements and Rules pages then the next time you have some spare time you might want to do so. There is also a link to a map of the provinces in China.

The next site is an attachment site that I highly recommend. I think that all parents who are adopting an institutionalized child should spend some time there before traveling. Attachment is best formed during periods of stress, and the first couple of weeks are incredibly stressful for all involved. Don’t blow this wonderful chance you have of forming bonds because you figured you’d read about attachment strategies if you thought there were problems. I’ve never talked to anyone who read up on attachment ahead of time who said it was a waste of time. But I know a lot of people who wish they had read up on it ahead of time because they missed some important red flags that they would have known about if they had only educated themselves about it first.

And last in this section is MandarinTools.com. When you get your referral packet I recommend that you go here to listen to the proper way to say your child’s name. Type in the pinyin word and tell it that it’s pinyin, you’ll see a list of meanings and the Mandarin characters will be shown. Find the one that looks like the character on your paperwork and click it – you’ll hear the word being said. Tone is important. If they sound ticked off when they say it then you must sound ticked off. If they say it in a singsong voice then you must try to match that sing song tone. You’ll also see the translation of your child’s name by doing this. Sometimes the literal translation gives you a good idea of the actual translation, but most times you’ll want to run it by someone who is fluent in Mandarin to get the correct translation. (Be aware that some names are in Cantonese and not Mandarin, though the vast majority are in Mandarin.)

Next is a list of categories I mentioned above. If you just want to see the posts about referral announcements then click on that category. If you want to see a list of posts about The Wait, then click on that category. If you are looking for an analysis I’ve recently done then click on Analysis. If you want to see Book Reviews then click on that.