We are both physicians and our careers are very important to us. For several years after medical school, Alex served as a doctor for the U.S. Navy. While he worked on both land and on sea, his greatest accomplishment was being a medical officer on the USS KEARSARGE for an eight-month deployment where he was responsible for the medical care of nearly 5,000 sailors and marines on board. He has completed his active duty term and is now working at a hospital in Delaware in the emergency department.

Jenny is a pediatrician at a local children's hospital where she specializes in the care of medically complex children. Jenny's patients often have rare or difficult to treat lifelong conditions and are often dependent of technology such as feeding tubes or ventilators for survival. She loves getting to know these children and partnering with their caregivers as their primary physician - taking care of them as their doctor when they are well and as their inpatient doctor when they require hospitalization. Aside from family, our work is the most important part of our lives.

Our ideal weekend morning would entail a pleasant morning walk to the local Farmer's Market and picking up supplies to cook a new recipe for dinner and getting fresh fruit for one of Jenny's homemade pies. We really enjoy cooking and baking together and will often host family, friends, or work colleagues for a meal in our home. We love going to an art or science museum for the day and learning together. We enjoy exercising together - perhaps Jenny is doing pilates in the basement while Alex rides the Peloton or maybe we take a nice walk, nature hike, or bike ride outdoors together. In the evenings, we most enjoy cuddling up on the couch in our pajamas and having a movie night. We each have some of our own hobbies and interests, as well. Alex loves listening to music on his record player and practicing the piano or saxophone. Jenny loves working in our vegetable garden and completing 1000 piece puzzles. Our cat, Sookie, most enjoys stealing and hiding Jenny's puzzle pieces so that each 1000 piece puzzle has only 999 pieces left! We cannot wait to share our love of food, music, nature, and art with our future child.

We are both Jewish and hope to raise our future child in the Jewish faith. While we do not consider ourselves particularly religious since we do not attend Synagogue regularly or follow rules like keeping a Kosher diet, we were both raised with Jewish traditions, culture, and ideals. Additionally, we both celebrated Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, the traditional ceremony that welcomes Jewish adolescents into adulthood. The Jewish faith promotes love, kindness, equity, service to one's community, and appreciation for family. We enjoy celebrating Jewish holidays together and look forward to teaching our future child how to light the menorah on Chanukah, say the prayers over the challah bread on Shabbat, and arranging the seder plate on Passover. We love cooking together and are excited to share family recipes for traditional Jewish foods like chocolate rugelach, kugel, and matzoh ball soup. We are even more excited to watch our child taste these delicious foods one day!

We live in a suburban, lively, family-friendly neighborhood in Delaware. There is a historic downtown area nearby that offers great spaces for walks, delicious restaurants, and community events to attend.

Our neighborhood consists of single-family homes intermingled with hiking trails, ponds, and playgrounds. Neighbors are often outside taking walks, riding bikes, gardening, and playing with their children.

There is great diversity in our neighborhood with families of various ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We moved to this neighborhood almost a year ago and were welcomed with baked goods and invitations to backyard barbecues.

We enjoy our time at home and keep a tidy, cozy household. We enjoy watching movies downstairs in the basement where we set-up an old-fashioned movie theater popcorn machine and old movie posters decorate the walls. We also love our upstairs loft area that we have made into a home office and library with filled bookcases and comfortable areas to relax and read.

We both grew up in tight-knit families and we remain very close with our parents, siblings, and extended families. Jenny grew up with a mom, dad, sister, and brother. Alex grew up with a mom, dad, and two sisters. Alex's mom was adopted when she was a baby and has been open about her experience and shared her perspective with us.

Both families had many pets growing up and we were raised to love animals, too. Our future child will have a feline sister - Sookie - our beloved 6 year old tabby cat.

We talk with our parents and siblings nearly every day and see each other frequently. We even enjoy celebrating some holidays jointly where both sides of the family come together. Some of Alex's favorite family traditions include his parent's Thanksgiving feast and the annual trip to the beach with his parents, siblings, and their families. Some of Jenny's favorite family traditions include trips to the boardwalk and watching sporting events while enjoying her mom's homemade stromboli.

Our future child will also have four incredible older cousins to play with. Our families are so excited to be a part of our adoption journey and look forward to having another child to welcome into our lives of love, humor, and happiness.

How can we even begin to convince you that we are worthy of the most precious gift you could ever give another person? How can we ever thank you for providing us with a child who will complete our family and fill our lives with a joy like nothing else? While words will never fully express our gratitude, we will try our best with this letter. Please know that we will think of you and be thankful to you every day for the rest of our lives.

We live a beautiful life and are so thankful for our parents, siblings, nephews, friends, and careers. Our marriage is filled with love, laughter, admiration, and adoration for one another. Our careers as physicians fill us with a sense of purpose and being trusted to care for a stranger's loved one is the greatest honor of our lives. We try our best to be grateful for all we have and appreciate the lives we have been given. Despite it all, though, we know our family and our lives are incomplete right now.

We have always wanted to be parents and raise a child together. We are each other's best friends and partners. Our love for each other is strong and endless and our relationship has only been strengthened by life's challenges. We turn to each other for everything from work stress to health struggles and have found that with each challenge, our partnership is even stronger. Even before experiencing infertility, we discussed the many ways to achieve this dream as a couple and knew that adoption was a journey that we would one day embark upon together. We have always known that our child does not need to share our DNA. He or she does not need to look like us. He or she did not have to grow within Jenny's body. We are so certain that the child we receive is the child who is meant to be ours. We could not love him or her more if they shared our DNA and looked like us and grew within us.

Our promise to you is that we are honest and true. The families we were raised in, the careers we have built, and the life we have created together as a couple are who we are. We want you to be confident in your decision to choose us and are open to answering all of your questions and getting to know you so you can be certain that we are the right match for each other; after all, our lives will be intertwined and our hearts connected from this point forward. Please know that our child will always know who you are and the selfless, loving decision you made when you chose adoption. This child will only ever hear us speak of you with words of respect and appreciation. And we will strive each and every day to provide the life you envisioned for this child.

So this letter is the start of a lifetime's worth of "thank-yous." We look forward to sharing pictures, letters, calls, and even visit with you over time so you can see the love and care this child receives. As he or she gets older, we will follow their lead and support and facilitate whatever relationship they wish to maintain with you and the rest of their birth family.

With love and gratitude,

Alex & Jenny