- Illinois -
We are incredibly excited to have the opportunity to become adoptive parents to another child! We decided to adopt again because we have always dreamed of having a larger family, but had some fertility challenges along the way. The challenges we faced taught us how strong we are as a couple and how deep our desire to have a family is. We are so thankful that we were given the opportunity to adopt our son, Asher, and feel so fortunate to have an open adoption with his birth family.
About Rachel by Ben "Rachel is a loving and caring person. Rachel is an intelligent and is always trying to learn more to futher her education. She is often learning more about her field or attending virtual seminars. Rachel has a flexible work schedule, so she is home with Asher a few days each week. She always comes up with great ideas for activities to do with Asher, like taking him to a music class or toddler yoga. Rachel encourages reading and is often taking a book off the shelf to read to Asher. Seeing Rachel's loving nature with Asher makes me look forward to our future parenting another child together."
About Ben by Rachel "Ben is easy-going, has a great sense of humor, and is the most caring person I have ever met. Ben is often spending time helping our families with projects and lending a hand to neighbors when needed. Anytime he is asked to help out, Ben is always there. Seeing Ben as a father has been amazing. He is always making Asher laugh and isn't afraid to get on the floor to play with him. Ben has a strong bond with Asher and Asher loves his dad! I can't wait to see Ben connect with another child in the same way."
Dear Expectant Mom,
We are so thankful to you for taking time to get to know us. Words can’t describe how grateful we are to be considered as adoptive parents to another child. We will support you in whatever decision you make and know it will be the best decision for you and your baby.
If you choose us as the adoptive parents, we want you to know we are
comfortable with any level of openness in our adoption. We are ready to follow your lead and understand that your needs in terms of openness may change from time to time. We are more than willing to go with the flow. We have been able to experience both the joy and grief of the adoption process with our son and his birth family and are prepared to support you in this process as well. We plan to support this baby in maintaining a connection with you throughout their life and making sure they know how strong and brave you are.
With love and admiration,
Rachel & Ben
Our goals as parents are to create a loving and supportive environment,
encourage exploration and hobbies, and maintain connection to culture and birth family.
We are very involved as parents and plan to always be involved in whatever our children are doing. We want to encourage and support them
in whatever is important to them. We have strong communication in our
family and hope to pass this on to our children. We want them to always be
able to openly speak about anything that is on their mind. We believe that
it is always important to listen to different opinions and experiences
without judgement and hope that our children will learn this from us.
We moved into our four bedroom, split level home in the spring of 2020
and have been working on projects to make it our own. One of the
things we love the most about this house is the dining room. We like
to host our families and friends for holidays, celebrations, and game
nights and the dining room has plenty of space for this. We have been
able to host some holidays in our home with Asher and can’t wait to
continue this with another child at our table.
We live in a friendly neighborhood in a great school
district. There is a newly renovated park just down the street from our home and several forest preserves nearby. The park has a playground, basketball courts, soccer nets, and baseball diamonds. We love going for walks through the neighborhood and taking Asher to the park. We often
picture ourselves going to the park with another child and our hearts
feel full thinking about this.
We started to set up a nursery, but made sure that things are neutral enough that they can be changed later on. Although we intend to leave things mostly the same for a while, we would love for the child we adopt to be able to express their style and help to pick out things they love in their bedroom someday.
We have a 13 year old miniature dachshund named Molly. She has lots of energy and her favorite game is fetch. She is great with kids and loves being able to play with our son. She would be thrilled to have another child to snuggle with and throw her ball for her someday!
Our family members include our parents, our brothers and sister-in-laws. We are fortunate enough to live within a 15 minute drive of our families. This allows us to see everyone for the big occasions like birthdays and holidays and have just the ordinary weekend BBQ. We also consider our friends to be our family and are lucky to have an amazing friend group nearby.
We are lucky to be able to have such a great relationship with
Asher’s birth family. We have been able to keep in touch regularly and had our first visit with Asher’s birth family right before his first birthday.
We keep pictures of Asher’s birth family in our home and often show him the pictures and talk to him about them. Should you choose us as adoptive
parents, we welcome the same open relationship with you.
One of our favorite hobbies together is music. We both grew up playing music and have continued to play music in our adult lives. We often play music together and we used to play in a community jazz band prior to Asher’s arrival. In addition to playing music, we also love listening
to music and like to explore different genres and styles of music. We enjoy
listening to live music. There are lots of different outdoor concerts in the
summer months in our area and we go to as many different concerts as we can. We are also close to many live music venues. We have been able to share our love of music with Asher and feel that music is important in any child’s life whether they want to play an instrument or not. After seeing how much Asher loves music, we can’t wait to share this experience with another child someday.