...and so we wait...Month 8!

Thank you all so much for taking part in my baby name poll! We had so much fun with it! I planned to take it down when we had 25 votes, but I think we were up to 76 when I composed this post. Of course my friend Laura admitted she voted several times for her favorite...which I am pretty sure is the case with my family as well (and you know who you are!). I had to resist the urge to jump in myself and vote a few times! We have not made any final decisions yet and I may just reconfigure the name poll at a later date and take votes again.

For now, we celebrate the passage of 8 months since our dossier has been registered in China. To put it into perspective...we received Lia's referral just a few days short of our 8 month LID anniversary. I think that fact has made this particular month a hard one for me. I recently entered our information into a referral date guesstimation program (based on mathematics and the current referral data) and if things continue as they are, we can expect to see our referral on August 10, 2015...give or take a few months. Thank goodness they add that little disclaimer at the end. (:-)) I do expect the referral rate to speed up at some point and I don't really think we will be waiting until 2015...but for now, the news is dire and really hard to fathom!

Despite the pessimism and sadness we sometimes experience, we realize what a precious opportunity we have been given. We are honored and humbled that Chinese officials will bestow upon us (pending review, of course!) the responsibility to raise another of their own daughters. We are thankful.

...and so we wait.