I am soooo tired of winter, and soooo ready for spring. I think TT is probably good enough on her bike for us to go on a family bike ride somewhere. I’m thinking that’s the game plan for the first pretty weekend we get.
But first, before we can go out and play, I really should spend a weekend doing our taxes. I’m not sure if it will be this weekend or next weekend. I really don’t like doing taxes, but it’s that time of year.
I also need to sit down and make a new family calendar. The girls have so much going on over the next few months, it’s going to be crazy. And I’ve got so much going on right now that I’m a bit unorganized, which is not a good thing. So, this weekend I’ve definitely got to take care of that. And taxes. And my car really needs to be cleaned out.
It was my turn to take TT to her speech therapy today, and I just love watching her interact with the speech therapist. They have so much fun, and she talks so much better when she’s in there and her speech is the focus. Today when she went in there were words up on the magnetic easel, and as the speech therapist reached to take them down (TT uses pictures on the magnetic easel), my little Twinkletoes started reading off the top few lines on the board. The speech therapist looked at her, then looked at the window I was in (I know she couldn’t see me, but she apparently wanted me to see the look on her face) and then looked back at TT and and pointed to a sentence near the bottom and TT read it off, too. So today they used a mixture of printed words and pictures in their sentences, and TwinkleToes had a blast. They also worked on words that rhyme today, helping TT make the words sound different (Wayne walked down Blueberry Lane). She had a really hard time with that, but she’s such a trooper and she worked very hard at it.
In a few weeks Twinkletoes gets to spend a day with the kindergarten teacher she will have next year. Twinkletoes is beyond ready for kindergarten when it comes to the things she knows, but she’s so tiny, and with her speech issues, I just worry about her. But she’s going to have the best kindergarten teacher ever, so I know it will be okay. And she’s already reading, and some weeks learns GG’s spelling words before GG has them down pat. ( I should point out here that GlitterGirl is not in the least bit amused by this.) When I took TT to the doctor a few weeks ago for her physical to get her registered for kindergarten, and she saw a picture of the doctor in his office with his kids, she said “Ooooh, Pictures. P – I – C – T – U – R – E, Picture”. The doctor gave her quite a startled look and then proceeded to quiz her on some other things. He was suitably impressed.
Which brings me to TwinkleToes’ size. She is still not on the chart for her age. It isn’t that she’s in the first percentile, or the zero’ith percentile. She’s not even on the chart. But, she’s grown three inches and four pounds in the last 18 months (the last time he saw her), her blood work was perfect, and she’s obviously quite smart. So we aren’t worried about her size. He wants her to stay on whole milk, told her she should keep eating her vegetables, and that was that.
I’m starting to make plans for TT’s family day. Can you believe we’ve been home with her for almost three years now? She has come such a long ways in three years. I can’t imagine my life without this little spitfire in it. The baby who didn’t know how to smile now has a smile on her face more often than not. And she has this belly laugh that is just pure joy to hear. Everyone within hearing distance of one of her laughs gets a smile on their face.
The first chart (below) shows the size (in poll numbers) of the previous batches and this batch. Please remember that each poll has to stand by itself, you can’t compare numbers from different polls. We can still get an idea of how the sizes of the batches have gone, but you can’t do a direct comparison.
As you can see, this batch was a similar size to last month. This is good this month, because it gives us hope that the CCAA is doing this based on number of babies, and that they aren’t going to just keep it to the number of days. With some smaller LID days coming up, that means we should be able to get through April a good bit quicker than we made it through March. Assuming the CCAA continues to do about the same number of referrals every month.
Next we’ll take a look at how reality has looked in hindsight with the projections. The graph below shows where past referral batches have fallen on my projections.
Here are my projections:
There were people last month who thought I had completely lost my mind (or were being terribly irresponsible) by saying the CCAA could get to the 11th. I’m sure some will say the same thing this time with my projection that the 20th is possible. Please understand that all I’m doing is looking at our poll numbers and looking at what is the most likely based on past performance from the CCAA. I’m not saying they will get to the 20th, I’m just saying that if they refer about the same number of babies then that’s how far they will get. They may do less, they may do more. I’m just projecting what is likely based on past performance.
You can always find your way back to the Projections and When posts by clicking on the Analysis category in the lower right hand column.
I’ll end this with my standard disclaimer: As always, projections are based on the CCAA continuing to do what they have been doing. There is nothing to say they will follow their recent behavior. They could choose to do a lot less, or a lot more.
The last 12 referral batches arrived at 24, 39, 32, 47, 30, 32, 31, 52, 51, 27, 34, and 28 day intervals.
The average is 33 days, and the median is 32 days. The shortest interval is 24 days and the longest is 52.
If we look purely at numbers then the soonest we’d expect to see referrals would be Thursday, March 25; the latest would be Thursday, April 22; and the most likely date would be Monday, April 5.
If I had to make a guess, I’d guess that they will arrive within about a week of that April 5th date.
If you are expecting a referral, or if you are in another program and would like to share your news, please list blog name and blog URL in the comments to this post.
The following sites have music and are not work safe:
*
*
Congrats to all of the families included in this batch, and congrats to everyone else with good news to share!!!!
Thankfully, I think that last category can remain empty so far, but if I could have help with that last category, please. I’ve disabled all of my computers from automatically playing (most) music on websites. It seems to be impossible to disable all types of music. But, since I think I’ve finally got most of it disabled, it’s hard for me to know if a site plays music. I know that many people want to check the blogs from work, and I’d like to be able to keep the site safe for them to do so.
I see one report of someone who saw someone say that someone had received their phone call, but they weren’t sure what country it was from. I really need to see something first hand, with a little more information, before I jump on that one too much. For now, I’ll say that we have no first hand reports of phone calls being made. Normally at this time we would have heard from one of the European countries.
Those with agencies who reported that referrals would arrive Monday – are they still saying this?
There is also a report that someone in Spain “confirmed” the cut off at the 11th. But I’m hearing that the box has not changed, and no one has reported to me which agency has “confirmed” this, so I’m not taking that one to the bank just yet, either.
UPDATE: Referalls have arrived in Denmark, for their 4/11 families. They do not have any 4/12 families. But this tells us that 1) referrals are coming and 2) they made it to at least the 11th.
Woo HOOO. Congrats to those families who know they are in!!!!!
If you want to be listed in this month’s babies post, please list your blog url and blog name in the comments to this post.
UPDATE #2: A European agency has posted to their web site that the through the 11th has been “assigned”, their word for matched. It’s looking more like it may be the 11th, but we don’t know what this agency’s LID’s are, so we don’t know for sure if they just know the cut off as it relates to their families, or the general cut off.
UPDATE #3: Looks like the cut-off is the 11th.
UPDATE #4: Looks like there were some expedited referrals in this group, too.
UPDATE #5: Lots of phone calls being reported now. Also, a few reports of NSN TA’s from the last batch of referrals. Congrats all around!!!
I’m hoping that we’ll get reports of the box changing so we’ll know for sure what the cut off is tonight, and won’t have to wait until phone calls start happening to figure it out.
I’ll put up the Babies!!! post at some point tomorrow once we see referrals start coming in. Assuming they arrive tomorrow, but since several agencies have said they expect delivery tomorrow, I think we’re all pretty much assuming we’ll see phone calls begin happening tomorrow.
I’m still in the midst of craziness at work. I should be able to approve posts that get hung up in the moderation queue at least every couple of hours, but I’m not sure how much more than that I’ll be able to do until I get home tomorrow evening.
