Adoption is very personal for us, especially for Patrick, since his sister is adopted. She was the only girl in a family of four brothers! To us, adoption is one of the most intimate human connections people can experience. The amount of trust and love involved is incredible; how rooted it is in these core human emotions makes it that much more remarkable. We know this is how we want our family to begin.

Patrick's sister's adoption was a closed adoption. We know that because of this, she grew up with many questions surrounding her adoption. She also has dealt with various health issues over the years, and some of those situations could have been helped by knowing her birth parents' medical history. This is one reason we welcome openness in our own adoption journey.

We intend to share our child's adoption journey with them starting at an early age. We want them to know where they came from and how we became a family. The last thing we want is for them to feel confused or hesitant to talk about their adoption story. Time has shown that being open and comfortable talking about the child's adoption offers the best outcome for that child. We'll start simple with children's books that feature adopted children and stories similar to our child's experience. As they get older and start asking questions or want to know more, we will be ready and comfortable to address those questions and explain it to our child in ways that they understand based on their age. This will include talking about our child's birth family and staying in contact with them depending, of course, on the birth family's level of openness.

To us being parents means giving our child unconditional love, support, and guidance throughout their entire life. Parenting also involves being your child's protector and caregiver—keeping them safe and nurturing them. It really all boils down to helping our child become the best human being they can be.

We will address cultural diversity by ensuring that our child is exposed to many different cultures, including their own. We're fortunate to live in a diverse area that offers the opportunity to experience other cultures through community events, public spaces, museums, concerts, and private establishments like restaurants.

It's our promise to make sure our child is proud about their own cultural identity and that they don't feel like they're the "only one" in their everyday environments. That starts at home with us educating and immersing ourselves in other cultures – something we do now and will continue to practice – and includes us being comfortable talking about things like race, ethnicity, and different cultural practices. It also means going out of our way to ensure our child spends time with people who look like them.

When it comes to pets, we see them as family. Our dog, Doba, is our only four-legged family member currently. He is a 6-year-old Shiba Inu, about 35-pounds, and kind of part-dog-part-cat. He has his moments of high energy, especially on walks or playing fetch, but he also loves taking a good nap in the sun or just lounging around the house.

We know he does well with kids, because he's spent a lot of time with our nieces and nephews, as well as neighbor kids, all of varying ages. We have a particular fond memory of him meeting our 2-year-old nephew where Doba proceeded to lick our nephew's feet, much to our nephew's delight! All in all, we have a lot of love for Doba, and we miss him on those rare trips that we can't bring him with us. He's as much a part of our lives as we are of his.

We live in a single-family home in a residential, suburban neighborhood with lots of families with young kids. Our home, which we've lived in for 3 years, has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms--plenty of room to welcome a child. We like having movie nights in the family room and socializing on our covered patio in the backyard.

There are parks, libraries, pools, and schools all within a mile or two of home.

Our neighborhood hosts many family-friendly block parties each year. Halloween is a big hit for kids with costume contests and trick-or-treating, and we host the hot cocoa station at our December holidays party. The neighborhood streets are dead-ends with low traffic, so kids are able to safely play or bike around with each other every day.

We purposefully sought out these community features, and we're excited to have the opportunity to raise a child here. Plus, our friends with young kids themselves are excited for us to bring even more kids to the neighborhood.

We are blessed to have large families with lots of potential aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents to welcome a child.

Patrick has 4 older siblings along with 12 nieces/nephews. We often gather at his parents' house for holidays or all go on vacations together where there's lots of card playing, yard games, cooking, or swimming.

Patrick's brother, his wife, and their 2 kids live nearby, and we enjoy spending lots of time with them. We recently hosted the kids at our home over a weekend; we played board games, watched movies, and went to their sports practices.

Aaron has 2 younger siblings and 1 nephew – the first grandbaby on his side of the family. His parents and step-parents are very excited for us to grow our family and add another grandkid to love and spoil!

While Aaron's family may not live close by, we're sure to visit regularly and look forward to continuing traditions like making a special, family recipe spaghetti sauce on Christmas Eve and trying out new board games with cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Hello,

We want to thank you for even considering us as possible parents to your baby. We can only begin to understand what you're feeling and what you're going through, but we also recognize how much strength, love, and courage this is taking on your end. Our hope is that learning more about us and our life together will help you in making the best decision for you and your baby.

A little history on us: we met in the summer of 2015 when we both lived in Wisconsin. Patrick had moved there for his first job out of college, and Aaron was finishing up his undergraduate degree. Our relationship grew and flourished over the following years through many big adventures ?" vacations, family gatherings, sporting events, and moving across the country ?" but we also enjoyed the smaller, quieter moments just spending time at home with our dog. We got engaged in January of 2019, and we married in September of 2021. Over 8 years, we've built a life together, celebrating plenty of good times and, of course, weathering some tough ones, too. Through it all, we're thankful and fortunate to have each other as partners.

Even from early in our relationship, we've both talked about and looked forward to becoming parents. We share lots of common life values?"such as kindness, respect, joy?"and we're so excited to share our love and our lives with a child.

We're also good complements of one another. Patrick is the analytical planner who loves spreadsheets and keeping tabs on our finances. He'll thrive at teaching this child new skills, playing games with them, and helping them with school work as they grow older. Aaron keeps life fun with a little spontaneity and really shines by keeping our lives going day-to-day. As a dad, he'll be great at nurturing this child, being their counselor in times of stress or grief, and always being there to support them.

While we each play to our strengths, we love spending time together, of course. We enjoy hanging out with our neighbors and nearby relatives and their kids. There are always kids riding bikes or playing in their front yards in our neighborhood. We also love going to the beach, playing sports outdoors like volleyball and pickleball, watching movies, and playing board games with friends. We can't wait to share all of these activities with a child.

As we raise your child, we plan to be open and honest with them about how we came to be a family through adoption by sharing the story with them in age-appropriate terms and giving them space to ask questions. We will keep in communication with you as their birth mother by regularly sending letters or emails and pictures of the child, and we're also open to in-person visits. It's important to us that the child feel supported and loved, and we think taking this open approach is the best way to do that. You will still be a significant person in your child's life, so we want them to have some relationship with you. Of course, too, if you ever feel overwhelmed or just need to take a break from our updates or messages, we'll always follow your lead and can be flexible to your needs as time passes.

Once again, we want to thank you for considering adoption and reading our profile. We are very excited to welcome a child into our home that we have made together and to raise them with all of the love and care in our hearts. We hope you would consider giving us that honor.

Aaron & Patrick