I thought learning to speak Mandarin was hard...Try China adoption lingo!

As a special ed teacher I am dealing with acronyms and weird lingo constantly, ADHD, EMD, LD etc but I am thinking that the China adoption/ adoption lingo may have special education beat!! The first one "the paperchase", all that is the insane amount of time it takes to get all of the required paperwork together, notarized, authenticated and state sealed. You have to be sure that your LOI (letter of intent, your promise to china to be a good parent) is with all of your paperwork.You are chasing your important papers so you can be DTC ( Date to China). This is the date your paperwork is mailed to China. Once you are DTC you anxiously wait to be LID (Log in date). This is when the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) actually logs you paperwork in as received. After your LID you patiently wait for your referral. This is the info and picture of your child. After you finally receive and accept your referral you wait a little bit longer for your TA (travel approval). When you travel to China you may go to your child's SWI (social welfare institute) and you will probably stay a few nights at the WS (White Swan hotel). Ok that is just the basics.

While you wait for your child you will hear things like "gotcha day", "forever family", "APC", and "RQ" . Gotcha day is referencing the day you finally meet your child in the flesh! An exciting day for sure, but gotcha kind of sounds like I am going to grab and run. I don't think we will use "gotcha". Next for what ever reason the adoption community calls when a child is adopted they are in their "forever family". Is it me or is this kind of goofy?? I mean really aren't all families forever?? If not, there are a few branches of my family tree I would like to hack off ! ( just kidding family members) We will not be using the goofy forever family thing. APC is an adoptive parenting board on yahoo! It stands for A-Parents-China. A great source of info, but be careful what you say, its not the most open non-judgmental board out there. RQ stands for Rumor Queen, a highly addictive blog that filters rumors about China adoption and more specifically when the next group of referrals are coming.

There is more if you want to post on a adoption board. DD (darling daughter) DH (darling husband) etc. As for the TBG gang our Mandarin is moving along. To be honest we are just working on "baby Mandarin". Hannah and I can now say with confidence baby don't cry, baby don't be scared, Mommy and daddy are here, and I love you. We have a few more lessons and we hope to work on time for bed, go to sleep, eat this , please and thank you :) all parenting essentials. LOL (laughing out loud)

Hope everyone is well,
TBG Gang
(call me if you want to know what the TBG stands for :)