Introducing Madeline Liang Milan

Here's our beautiful daughter Madeline Liang Milan aka Luo Yi Liang. We love her already and can't wait to see those beautiful eyes in person! She was born 7 August 2008 and is currently residing at the Xiangyin SWI slightly north of Changsha the capital of Hunan province. She is a deep sleeper - goes to bed at 8 pm up at 6:30 am which is perfect for us. She likes to spend time in her walker and go for walks outside with her caregiver. Her favourite toys are dolls. She only cries when she needs changing or when hungry although I'm guessing she'll also cry when she's passed off to strangers - but we'll see soon enough. She gets along well with the other friends in her room and her favourite person is her caregiver. The pictures above were taken at about 10 months.

The Call

We got the call from Linda our facilitator tonight. I was completely unprepared as I was sure I wouldn't hear from her until Friday at the earliest. John is in Montreal so I was out having dinner with the girls. All I know right now is that we have a baby girl currently residing in Hunan province. I have no birth date or anything as the paper work is being translated. Linda said we can expect our package early next week. I really hope she will call back with the birth date tomorrow so I can share a bit more information when we go back to Saint John this weekend. This is very exciting.

Waiting for the call

It seems that matching is done and referral packages are being sent out. There was already 1 family on Rumour Queen that got the package for their little girl born September 5, 2008 and she's a cutey! I'm very nervous right now in anticipation of that first phone call from our facilitator when she will tell us the birth date and the province in which our little girl was born. It's hard to focus on anything at the moment while waiting for that call. We are so lucky to have an LID of 21 Mar 06 as they only made it to 22 Mar 06 this month. No more waiting for us!

Matching

We heard from our facilitator today and it seems that the CCAA is in fact matching as we speak. Once matching is complete we should expect our referral to arrive 1-2 weeks after. It's so exciting and surreal to know that someone is currently matching us with our daughter after all this time.

Preparing to Match

First rumour is out that the CCAA is preparing to match the next batch of babies - that means we are soon going to be matched with our daughter. This is exciting! We're getting closer - all of a sudden it feels like I have so much to do to get ready.
We also got to see the pictures of Maelin - the daugther of the New Brunswick couple in our group who got referred in the last batch and she's adorable.

We're Next!

On Monday 22 June 2009 it was confirmed that the CCAA had placed families with LIDs up to and including 20th March 2006 - 1 day short of our LID date! As Lindsey put it - "this is excruciating!" Last Thursday we heard that matching was complete and referrals were soon to be mailed and that they were going to 20th March for certain and possibly 21st we couldn't believe it. Our travel group was in quite a state hanging on every Rumour Queen update. By Saturday night when we met for our 21st group dinner we were ready for a celebration after the anxiety of not knowing for certain if we were in or out. By then we had convinced ourselves that the 21st was not included so we toasted the New Brunswickers, Cheryl and Mike in our group whose LID was 15th March 2006 so they were included in the batch. We also toasted all the Fathers-to-be in the room as it was officially Father's Day by the end of the evening.

Hopeful Rumour

We figure we are very close to getting our referral at this point since the CCAA has placed families up to and including 14 March 2006 and our Log-in Date (LID) is 21 March. There was an early rumour today that all of the month of March is currently being matched! Seems unlikely given that would mean a much larger batch of referrals than has been seen in some time - that said - we only need to get to the 21st! To think that it's a possibilty that we will see our baby girl's picture within a month is unbelievable and overwhelming given the length of our wait. We are so excited to see her little face. I hate to do it but I will be glued to Rumour Queen over the next couple of weeks waiting for the next rumour. Between that and all the nesting - I won't be getting much else done this month.