On Legends and Beginnings

First off, I'd like to stave off one very important question about the "red thread" concept, as a number of people have given us some very strange looks when we hand out post-its with the blog address:

An ancient Chinese legend says that "when a child is born, an invisible red thread connects that child's soul to all those people, present and future, who will play a part in that child's life." Another telling is that "an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance." (Love's Journey 2, published by Love Without Boundaries.)

There. Make sense?

As Jen mentioned, I'm officially making my GLOBAL BLOG DEBUT by filling in some blanks.

So, why adoption?

The (very) short version of our prologue is that Jen and I were happily married in 2006 and at the end of 2007, we decided it was the right time to start a family. Toward the end of 2008 we started to investigate why no family was forthcoming, and by the beginning of 2009 we started to come to terms with the fact that a traditional family wasn't in the cards for us. As much as we love our dogs, they are a poor replacement for actual, human children.

above: worthless dogs, not human children
(alternate caption: left - Tikka, pretending she wasn't just cuddling up to Curry's butt and right - Curry, doing his hilarious comedy bit where he pretends he has no legs)

Determined to have a family, we next went through a couple of horrifying rounds of infertility treatments before deciding that we'd rather start our family with our sanity intact (I should point out here that I'm well aware of the hardship that many people go through during infertility treatment, and we have total respect for the many that continue it through many sessions... we just decided that it really wasn't for us).

Our next option was to look to adoption. This surprisingly was not a difficult decision to come to. We both have zero sense of biological imperative to propagate our own genetics, which might in part be owed to the fact that we both have crap genetics and any biological kid of ours would be doomed from the get-go. This is no slight against any of our parents, grandparents et al, who are all perfectly intact human beings. We just want kids, we don't care so much that they're not of our own making. They will be our kids in every way that matters.

Jen already talked about why China, and the truth is that this decision was made over a year and a half ago. Different countries have different requirements about age, income level, fitness, etc., and one of China's requirements was that we both be 30 years old at the time they receive our dossier. Jen being 28 at the time meant waiting until now to get started.

So here we go.

-- Kevin

P.S. Have questions in particular (all two of you followers?) Leave a comment and we'll answer what we can.