Casting Out Nines

I’m a proud papa again! Everybody — meet Peanut.

My wife and her mother are in China right now. They received Peanut this morning (which is Sunday evening China time). Everybody is doing fine, and Doodlebug and I are anxious for the crew to get home so we can… well, I was about to say “get back to normal”, but we’ve never quite been “normal”.

An aside to tie this in to the main theme of this blog: The technology we’ve been able to use has been amazing. I am deeply impressed with the ability of technology — particularly media and communications technology — to make this trip, which is extremely stressful on the whole family, into something almost ordinary. Case in point would be the above picture. At around 2:00 AM Indiana time, my wife and mother-in-law received Peanut from the orphanage. At 3:00, pictures were taken. At 7:00, I get a call from China to our Vonage home number and it sounds as clear as if I were talking across the room. At 7:15, I got the pictures in email. At 7:30, I upload them to the photo center at the Walgreen’s five miles from our house. At 9:30 I pick the prints up. At 10:00 I am showing them off at church. This afternoon, Doodlebug and I will be sitting down in front of the Macbook to make a video message with iMovie which we will then email to China, so that Peanut can get use to the sounds of our voices and how we look.

I think we lose sight of just how powerful of a force — a force for good — technology can be in our lives.