Matching

It is a bit surreal after all this time to think about the fact that my dossier has moved to the matching room. When we started this whole process 5+ years ago I was so good about documenting all the steps we would go through here on this blog. But so much time has passed and so much wonderful life has happened that I find myself glazing over the fact that our dossier is. in. the. matching. room!  If you are one of my friends jumping up and down with me right now and you find yourself thinking what the hell is the matching room? This post is for you....


In the spring of 2006 I spent 10 weeks gathering every piece of information about our family and every member in it. Medical documents, financial documents, pictures of us and our home, testimonial letters from friends, and of course the all encompassing homestudy. Once everything was gathered, notarized, certified by the State of Massachusetts, and authenticated by the Chinese consulate, it became our dossier and was sent to our adoption agency for translation. CCAI received it on June 22, 2006, translated it and mailed it off to the CCAA in China on June 28th. The CCAA logged us in on July 6, 2006 and then our beloved dossier sat.

And sat.

A year or so later, we were informed our dossier had been through the review room and there were no issues with our file. And then it sat again once more. This time for years and years. It is probably dusty now don't you think? It's been sitting in a room like this for YEARS.

But when the CCAA gets close to matching your LID (login date) they move your dossier into the MATCHING ROOM. It is likely transported like this, with lots of other dossiers.

At the same time, orphanage directors prepare little dossiers for the children in their care who are ready for adoption. Each month the CCAA sits down in this room, at these desks to match children with parents.

From what I understand, the CCAA first tries to match orphanages with agencies based on numbers. For instance if Orphanage 1 has 6 children and Agency B has 6 families with the same LID, the CCAA official will put that orphanage with that agency group. Sometimes agencies with a large number of families with similar LIDs will be matched with a grouping of orphanages.


Once orphanages are matched with agencies, parents are then matched with the children. This is where all that paperwork comes into play. The CCAA matching officials will read your dossier, learn a little about you and your family, and try to match you with a baby they think will fold well into your family. The photo below shows people busy at work matching.

So right now, someone in China could be reading about our family of four and thinking about which baby might love being the little sister to SweetPea and Buddy. But here's the fly in that ointment, our dossier is a snapshot in time. The pictures they are looking at show a 4 year old little girl and a 3 year old boy. So much has changed but we have not been required to send updated photos or information to China.

And the horror of horrors, the CCAA thinks I am blonde. 
 (when my son recently saw a picture of me from that time, he said with a frown on his face, "mommy, that color hair wasn't the greatest for you." Ha! Even he knows I looked silly!)