Charles & Amy

Dear Expectant Parents:

We cannot imagine or fully understand the difficult choice you are making now.  However, we do know that we are on a parallel path on this strange journey of adoption.  We can only hope that at some point our paths will intersect.

We have known from early in our relationship that it was highly likely that we would be unable to have biological children.  However, our love for each other was so strong that we knew we could be together and still achieve our dream of becoming parents.  We chose adoption as the way to build our family.

Our relationship is one of love, patience, kindness, fun, and togetherness.  At the foundation, we have a true friendship built on shared interests and values.  We truly work together as teammates and partners.  This has become even more important as we entered parenthood.

On September 3, 2007, we were lucky enough to bring our daughter, Abigail, home.  She was only two days old.  She has brought such immense joy to our lives.  It is amazing to see how much she has grown, changed, discovered, and learned.  It is hard to believe she will be four soon.  There have been difficult times for sure, but it is more than outweighed by the good times.  It is amazing how funny she can be and how being together is the best part of the day.

Abby will make a great big sister.  She talks about babies frequently and her desire to have two girl babies and two boy babies.  Although that exact dream is not likely to come true, we do hope her dream of becoming a big sister will come true. 

As a family, we enjoy being active and experiencing different things.  Abby has already been on an airplane a number of times – mostly to DC to visit Charles’s family, but also to Hilton Head, San Diego, and Disney World.  Closer to home, we love going to the pool, zoo and the park.  We are lucky enough to have a park in our neighborhood, commonly known in our house as “Abby’s Park”.  We spend a lot of time with Abby’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin (who is just a few months older than Abby).  We also love having time for the three of us – to play, be goofy, try new things and watch Abby experience some of the joys of life.

We hope the pictures we have chosen to include here show you a little bit about our family.

The one of the three of us was taken at the zoo at Breakfast with Santa.  We love celebrating the holidays and enjoying as many festivities as possible. 

The picture of Abby and Amy was taken on the beach of Hilton Head.  I love to give Abby huge hugs and I love the joy and love in both our faces in this picture.

The picture of Abby and Charles was taken at the Children’s Museum in Glenview, IL. There were face painting crayons available and they decided to paint each other’s faces.  Abby adores her daddy and his willingness to do anything with and for her.

Even as parents, we still try to make time for ourselves and each other.  Amy’s interests include arts and crafts and reading.  Charles’s interests include playing sports especially soccer.  We love to be outdoors and travel.

We both feel extremely blessed to be parents.  It is one of the most difficult, yet rewarding things we have ever done.   We are lucky enough to have family (Amy’s parents, sister, brother in law) close by to support us.  Charles’s family lives in the Washington DC area but is still very involved in our lives.  The time we spend with Abby is amazing and we cannot wait to experience that with another child.

If you choose us, we cannot promise that the child will have the perfect life (if there is such a thing).  We can and do promise that the child will always be loved – not only by us, but by an extended group of family and friends as well.  We promise that the child will have life experiences that he or she can cherish.  We promise a home filled with laughter and joy.

We hope you contact us or the agency to learn more about us.  Hopefully, we will meet at some point and get to know more about each other.  However, if you do not choose us or adoption, we wish you the best of luck in the future.

With warmest regards,

Amy and Charles

(Married)

PREFERENCES FOR CHILD

Age:               Birth to 3 months of age, twins acceptable

Ethnicity:       Caucasian, Hispanic

Openness:     Willing to send and receive e-mails, letters, and photos.

                       Willing to place and receive phone calls.                                

                       Willing to have visitation after adoption finalization.