Finding our daughter

I know that you guys must be interested to know how the matching process works, and what our daughter will be like. For most of the kids on the waiting list, your dossier has to be in China already to possibly match with the kid. The chances are small that we will be matched before ours is in China. Our adoption agency has access to two lists of waiting kids. The first list is the shared list. The shared list comes from China, and they send out profiles of kids they are adding to the waiting child list. It happens about once a month, and all agencies can look at the list. The agency representatives lock in the file if they have a matching family. The family has 72 hours to decide. China is actually supposed to release some tonight (which is monday morning in China)- so there will be families getting their match calls tomorrow! The other list is the designated list. This is a list of waiting kids that our agency gets, and our agency has a few months to match the kids, then they will go to another agency or to the shared list. Most of the matches for our agency come from this list. I am not sure how often kids are added to this list- I need to ask!

So the big question is when we will get matched!! It could be any day, but it most likely won't be until after our dossier is in China, which could be 6-7 months from now. Once our dossier is in China I will be anxiously awaiting our match call. I will be shocked if it happens before then.

The other questions is what special need(s) will our daughter have? Honestly we don't really know. We are open to quite a few. Here is the excerpt from our adoption petition:

Child we wish to adopt: We are hoping to adopt a girl, aged 30-60 months old. We would like to adopt a child with special needs. We are open to cleft lip and palate, club foot/feet, missing fingers/toes, missing hands/arms, missing feet/legs, nystagmus, strabismus, and ptosis. We would consider facial malformation, minor congenital heart disease, Hiv+, thalassemia, arthrogryposis/joint disorders, scoliosis, dwarfism, spina bifida, ear malformation, partial/moderate hearing loss, cataracts, glaucoma, partial/moderate vision loss, nevus, birthmark, vitiligo, hemangioma, lymphangioma, scar, burns, anal atresia, gastroschisis, epilepsy, and paralysis of one limb. 

As long as our homestudy supports that we could care for a child with any of the above conditions, that is what will go to China. Our agency already knows this, and is keeping an eye out for our daughter now. It is hard to wait to see her and learn more about her- we are keeping busy with the paperwork in the mean time!!