ParentProfiles.com

Chris & Ann are hopeful adoptive parents from Ohio waiting to adopt a baby.

If you are pregnant and considering placing your child for adoption, please read the following Dear Birthmother Letter.

Congratulations!
Adoption in Progress.

Hello! Hi! Thank you for taking the time to learn about our family, and we are honored to be a part of your adoption search. We hope this site will help you learn more about our lives, and we would love the opportunity to get to know you better too. We have so much to share, but we think this site reflects the most important aspects of our lives--love, faith and family. This is a picture of us on vacation with our son, Will, who we adopted 2 years ago.

Our Life in a Nutshell
We met under a tree in college in 1996, married in the fall of 2000, and have been enjoying the best things in life together ever since. We knew early in our relationship that we wanted to have children, and though our road to parenthood was longer and a little bumpier than anticipated, we were blessed to welcome our son William in 2006 through an open adoption. He is our joy and we are grateful every day to his birthfamily for bringing him into our lives. We have so much more love and laughter to share and can’t wait to have another baby!

After graduating with our Bachelor's degrees and before Will was born, we each went back to school at night to get our Master’s degrees so we could pursue the careers that really make us happy. Chris is an Urban Planner and runs a non-profit organization that works to revitalize struggling communities in Cleveland. Ann works for a bank and loves the fast pace of her job and her family friendly workplace. Our jobs provide us with a comfortable lifestyle and leave plenty of quality time to be spent with the most important people in our lives--our family!

On the weekends we enjoy being outdoors going to festivals in the city, spending afternoons at the Children’s Museum, camping and hiking in our national parks, and taking strolls on the beach in Northern Michigan. We have many pastimes--Chris likes to play the acoustic guitar and hike and Ann likes to exercise with our dog, Stanley, and knit gifts for her friends. We also take Will to a weekly music class where we dance and play loud instruments together. Regardless of the activity, we just enjoy spending time as a family!

Our Families & Community Family is central to our lives together. We are blessed to both come from large Catholic families and everyone is very excited to have another child to love.

Chris grew up in Indianapolis with his older sister, and we still get back there often to visit his parents. Chris’s sister, Shannon, lives in Colorado and has two young sons. Though they live far away, we are lucky to be able to spend most Christmas’s together in Florida. We always have a great time when we get the three boys together and spend quality time with his family.

Ann grew up in Michigan with her two older sisters and her parents still live in her childhood home. They are a short drive from Cleveland, so we are able to visit often with her parents, siblings, and Will’s five cousins. Ann’s family has had a vacation home in Northern Michigan since she was a child, and we all gather there for summer fun on Lake Michigan and winter skiing on the slopes. It is a retreat we cherish!

We moved from Michigan to Ohio in 2007 and live in a historic district in downtown Cleveland called Ohio City. It is a funky little urban community and the people here are a close group of young families, artist, doctors, bankers and bike messengers. From our home we can walk to great restaurants and cafes, the grocery store, church, cute gift shops, a farmers market, urban gardens and parks. We are lucky to be able to ride our bikes or walk to most places, so we rarely have to get in the car. Around the corner from our house is a large park with a playscape and water activity area where Will loves to play with the other kids in the neighborhood. In the summer, the community coordinates outdoor movies (Charlotte’s Web!), double dutch tournaments, & an ice cream social ever Thursday. We love it!

Though we haven’t lived here long, we have made wonderful friends and they are all excited to welcome our new child. Our home is often the gathering place for an impromptu neighborhood barbecue, but the big event of the year is Chris's annual pancake party coming up in November. It's amazing how many people come out for pancakes! Above all, our favorite aspect of our community is that all of the neighbors are very close and everyone pitches in to make our neighborhood a great place to raise a family.

Open Adoption We can only imagine that placing your child for adoption is a difficult choice, and that reviewing all of the hopeful and deserving adoptive families must be overwhelming. Not every family is the right fit, but we know from our first adoption that we will connect with our child’s birthfamily when the time is right.

Through an open adoption we hope to build a relationship with our child's birthfamily based on honesty, understanding and mutual respect that meets the needs of everyone involved. We will follow your lead and would gladly share letters, pictures and visits depending on your desire for openness.

We have an open adoption with Will's birthfamily and we enjoy keeping up with each other over email, blogs and occasional visits. Will's Birthmother wrote the following letter to describe our adoption and ongoing relationship. We are overwhelmed and grateful for her support and hope you will read about our experience in her words.

A Letter from Will’s Birthmother
When I found myself in an unexpected pregnancy, after some pretty rough times, I decided to explore the world of adoption. Just three days after searching online websites, I came upon the picture of Chris and Ann. They looked so happy, and so... real. After reading their letter I knew that I'd like to meet them so I sent an email. The email sparked dozens of lengthy conversations between Ann and I (and sometimes Chris too!). It seemed as though we became instant friends, and we met only a couple short months after I first contacted them.

Over the course of my pregnancy we became great buddies. I felt (and feel) like I could talk to Ann about anything. I even talked to her about how scared I sometimes felt, about how I'd feel to have my daughter's sibling live in another home far away. We talked about our families, our backgrounds, our hopes for the future. I fell in love with their senses of humor, and I appreciated their straightforward honesty. They were just so real.

I was so blessed when they invited me to Will's baptism when he was 6 months old, and my mom and I flew up to meet all of his family. Their hospitality was fabulous, and I couldn't help but feel loved. This year, their little family flew down to see me and my daughter, and to meet my husband, Will's Birthfather. To have them in my home was beyond special. We had lots of laughs, took lots of pictures, and played some dominoes.

I think that we have such a special relationship because we're honest with each other. I'm grateful for the chance to keep in touch with them through pictures, email, and the occasional phone call about how I'm doing in school or the latest movie they saw. We share a lot of laughs, and a lot of love, and I pray that William will soon have a little brother or sister to laugh with them and their happy little family. I could not imagine placing a child in a more special home. William gained the best parents he could ask for, and I gained a couple of really great friends.

Thank You! Thank you for stopping to learn about us, and we’d love the opportunity to learn more about you too! We are so excited to welcome another child and birthfamily into our lives, and want you to know that we intend to raise our child to be proud of his or her birth story and the family who blessed us with such an amazing gift. We hope to be able to share more hopes and dreams together with you--please call or email us anytime.

Send us a message or contact Ann by phone at 1-866-788-5648.