ParentProfiles.com

John & Dawn are hopeful adoptive parents from Illinois waiting to adopt a baby.

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

Hello from John, Dawn and Amelia If you were to ask what open adoption means to us, our answer would be "everything". Open adoption gave us the most beautiful baby girl over three years ago. It brought our families closer together and added even more loved ones to our lives. And we hope it allows our daughter to become the big sister she is meant to be.

After you read our profile, we hope you gain a better sense of who we are and how we came to be a family. We are excited that you want to know more about our lives and that you're possibly considering us for an adoption plan. Because our home was tremendously blessed through open adoption over three years ago, we have a small sense of how emotional this time can be for you and pray you find all that you're hoping for.

Why do we want to adopt? We consider ourselves lucky that we found each other almost a decade ago. It was after a Cubs game in 1999 when we first laid eyes upon each other. After dating two years, John proposed to Dawn during the Christmas holidays and we were married a year later on a small island off the coast of Georgia. Our relationship has grown stronger over the years and is founded on love, trust, respect and a large serving of humor. We are self-assured individuals who value our lives together, taking nothing for granted. Ask any of our friends and family what we are like as a couple, and they are bound to reply with the words "laid-back, loyal, entertaining and witty, purposeful and hard-working, and full of love and laughter".

Since Dawn was a teenager, she knew she would not be able to bear children due to a genetic disorder. Early on in our relationship, we talked extensively about adopting children and were both excited but nervous when we started the formal process several years ago. We were the luckiest people on Earth when we adopted Amelia. The entire experience opened our eyes and showed us what open adoption really means. Today, we're blessed to have what we call extended family in Amelia's birth family. We communicate with her birth mother and birth grandmother regularly and see them a couple of times a year. When Amelia was born, we created a blog about her that allows her birth family and our own families to see recent pictures and read stories of Amelia's everyday life.

We both agree that we'd like to have two or three children some day. John loves having siblings and grew up with an older brother and sister. Dawn was an only child but grew up in a small town in Georgia with many cousins. Family is so important to us, more so now because of Amelia. It's great to see her playing with her cousins and talking to Grandma on the phone. Because our family lives in other states, we've developed close relationships with friends here in Chicagoland. We think it's great that our closest friends have children around the same age as Amelia, and we love hanging out with them and sharing fun parenting stories with each other. Whenever she's around other children, Amelia lights up and truly enjoys herself. We look at her and know she'll be a fantastic big sister someday.

Last year, we bought our dream home in a suburb near Chicago. One of the main reasons for the move was the school district in our suburb -- it's one of the best in the state of Illinois. Our neighbors all have children that are Amelia's age. We previously lived in downtown Chicago but found out that having a toddler requires A LOT of space. Our new home has four bedrooms (including Grandma's guest suite), a huge finished basement (complete with bouncing castle), and a large backyard that's perfect for soccer, kickball or late summer night games of tag and hide-and-go seek. We're within walking distance of the Brookfield Zoo and have family memberships. We're also near a neat bike path that runs for miles through the forest preserves.

We both grew up with a home full of pets. Today, our home is run by our two adorable cats, Bogey and Duke. We named them after our favorite actors -- Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. They were adopted from the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society as kittens. Amelia loves the cats and tries her best to catch them. Sadly, the cats have a vast array of hiding places in our home. But Amelia is very good with animals, especially dogs. She just loves playing with dogs and seems to have no fear around them.

Our lives at home. John is a partner in a management consulting firm. He travels to all parts of the country and helps financial services companies improve their operations. Because of the nature of John's work, he often gets to work from home. Dawn became a stay-at-home mom after Amelia was born and loves her role of homemaker. She previously worked for an Internet company that helps automobile dealers advertise their inventory on the Internet. We both understand how important our home life is, and we make sure to focus on each other when we're home.

A lot of our happiness comes from the simple things, such as sharing a love of many similar interests, hobbies and passions. If it's nice out, we'll head over to the zoo, bike on the local forest preserve trail, or just hang out in the backyard blowing bubbles with Amelia. We are members at Brookfield Zoo, Shedd Aquarium, and The Field Museum and go to all of them as often as we can. Exploring new restaurants is a passion in our family, although we now have to make sure the restaurant has high chairs and high noise levels! Although Amelia doesn't profess her love everyday for vegetables, she eats very well for a toddler and has her favorite meals, like mac and cheese, PB&Js, and chicken strips. Even though Dawn doesn't have a green thumb, she has a small garden that Amelia likes to help with. Her favorites are cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and snap peas.

Traveling has always been one of our favorite activities. Before Amelia was born, we both lived abroad in Europe at different points in our lives (Holland, Belgium and Germany). We've also been able to travel around the world to places such as India, New Zealand, Australia, and even honeymooned in Italy. We've been able to take a lot of trips since Amelia was born, including road trips to Michigan and Wisconsin and flights to Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. We visit John's family in Michigan throughout the year and have started a tradition of vacationing on Lake Michigan with them every summer. We'll never lose the travel bug and will make sure our children have the same chance to explore the world as we did.

Another thing we share is our strong belief in education. John's mother is a retired elementary school teacher. At bedtime when he was a child, his mother used to have him tell stories from his day and she would write them down in a black-and-white composition book. The next night she would have him read them back to her. That's how he learned to read and write. It was the greatest gift his mother gave him as a child. We both feel very strongly that we must give our children the best educational opportunities we can, and that's one of the main reasons we moved to our town.

Our promise to you Our greatest joy would be for the child we adopt to know that you made everything possible by choosing adoption. Our adopted child will know of the courage and devotion you showed by ensuring that your child would enjoy every chance in life. They will grow up knowing where he or she came from. We will help them become confident in themselves and in all that they do.

We make this promise to you: we will give your child unconditional love, happiness, and every opportunity we can, and we will show you nothing but respect, friendship and loyalty for the rest of our lives. Our home and our hearts are prepared for the promising journey ahead.