Arguing Logic

I know what you're thinking. I said I neglected the blog before and the logical conclusion would be that I wouldn't ignore it again. But I haven't posted since April, and really... that was only one post...

But whatever. It's my blog. (And I've been writing a lot, just not posting. If a tree falls in the woods and so on.)

Anyway! Enjoy!

We are, on the one hand, brand new to, and on the other hand, more than one year into our adoption journey. It started like this:

I have always believed that, if I had a family, I would create that family through adoption. I blame my grandparents for it. They created their family through adoption and as a result, I am not biologically related to at least half of my relatives. Because of that, I have just never really cared about biology. (Can I blame my poor high school science grades on that? No?)

In May of 2013 I turned to Chris and said, "let's adopt." Because, sure, we're young, but we're certainly not getting any younger. Chris replied, "let's look into it." He might as well have said, "I bet you can't spend five to seven hours a night researching agencies, requirements, countries, special needs, physicians, medical insurance, physical, occupational and speech therapies, early intervention programs, parenting children from complex backgrounds, financing and travel arrangements, every night for the next year."

Check and mate.

After months of discussions and research, we decided to move forward with an adoption from China. We looked into domestic adoption, foster-care-to-adoption, international adoption, different countries, different programs... the list goes on and on. Ultimately, we have to come to the path that is the best fit for us.

In a U.S. adoption, we would have one of two options: wait for a birth mother to choose us, or foster-care adoption.

We immediately ruled out the birth mother choice. Because really... we're not baby people. I KNOW. That's horrible. Babies have big heads and huge eyes and they're evolutionarily designed to be adorable so their parents don't eat them but... we're not baby people. Except your baby. Your baby is super cute and we'd love to babysit except...

Fos-Adopt (foster care adoption in California) is something I really explored in depth and thought long and hard about. But ultimately, the children tend to be older and in sibling groups. And as first time parents, we recognize our limitations in being able to provide the environment an older sibling group would need.

So we've decided to create our family in a way that will piss off a lot of racist, xenophobic jerks by bringing a foreign-born, non-white child into the U.S. and having her become a U.S. citizen. (HA! Just kidding. That's not why. But that might be what I tell the next person who says, "why do you want to bring in one of their kids?")

"I get all the arguments against it. I even get the one that says I don't know if I want to bring another kid into this world. But how do you argue with the logic of loving one that's already here?" -John Cusack in 'Martian Child'