We adopted our son, Miles, seven years ago. He has been with us since he was 14 hours old. Raising him has been the greatest joy, privilege and responsibility of our lives. Seeing how American Adoptions respected our son's first mother, combined with the joy that he has brought into our lives, led us to choose adoption again when we were ready to grow our family. Miles knows that we adopted him and has known this since the first day. But the details? Those are his story to tell and we will support him all the way. We're committed to supporting his choices, his first mother's choices, as well as your choices for your child. We've seen first hand how difficult this decision is. We've seen the tears and the heartache. We've seen, and also know first-hand as parents, how overwhelming can be to trust others with your child.

So we promise you this: Your child will be loved with every fiber of our being. The wishes you have for their future? We have those too. We want them to grow up healthy and happy, with the support to make their hopes and dreams come true. We promise to give them everything that they need, but not everything that they want, so that they always have something to reach for. If you want contact, we would be thrilled for that. If you would prefer to take space, we will respect your wishes. Wishing you peace, strength, and above all: hope.

On any given weekend, if we aren’t visiting family, we enjoy exploring our area together or spending time on one of our favorite activities. We love visiting the Smithsonian museums, going on bike rides, and hanging out with friends at our local pool. During the winter months, skiing is a special family tradition, and we often ski with friends at the mountain where Joanna loves being an instructor.

During the week, after school and homework, we like cooking together, watching television, or building things. We have lots of legos, and Josh even has a woodshop area and a 3D printer. Joanna likes cooking and baking, and Miles helps with the cupcake decorating (especially eating the frosting!) Our next child will grow up with the same active lifestyle.

Raising a child with an appreciation of their history is important to us for many reasons. We chose to live in an area with people from all different walks of life intentionally. We picked the DC area because of how many different languages we heard while walking around. We believe that there is so much we can learn from people who have a different life experience than we do. Many people ask us, "if you two grew up together, why didn't you start dating until after college?" The answer is that we came from different backgrounds: Josh from a Jewish family and Joanna from a German family, and not everyone we knew liked the idea of two people from those two backgrounds getting together. But we quickly learned that bringing together different cultures into one family came with unexpected but absolutely worthwhile challenges and surprises. We settled in a community that respects, embraces, and encourages the diversity of this nation and we enjoy sharing in our neighbors' and friends' different cultures. Joanna's work colleagues speak 28 different languages! Joanna lived in Spain and hopes to share some of the Spanish culture and language with this child no matter what the child's background is. We sent our son to Spanish immersion preschool and now he’s in Spanish class at his elementary school. We’re so proud that he gave a presentation on Columbia entirely in Spanish.

We're thrilled at the possibility of sharing the experience of learning about another child's background and helping them understand that our differences are what make us interesting, fun, and special, and that they are always worthy of love.

Because we grew up in the same town, our parents still live near each other. We can easily see them anytime we want. They can’t wait to dote on another grandchild.

Joanna had a very close relationship with her grandmother growing up. So we try to give our children every opportunity to spend time with their grandparents and extended family. We can see how much our son grows on each trip, and make lifetime memories that he will cherish forever.

Our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles live all over the country. We love traveling to see them, so your child will get to see different parts of the country from California to Florida and Oregon and Pennsylvania.

We’re always getting ready for a new adventure to see our family members. We love camping with Josh’s sister and her dogs in St. Louis, visiting California aquariums with his brother, and exploring national parks with Joanna’s sister who is a National Park Ranger.

We recently travelled with Joanna’s parents to Chicago where we were able to meet a sea otter up close. Josh’s Mom has a dog that our son loves playing with. They have great fun in the pool.

Our son is so loved by everyone in our family, and we can already feel how completely they will adore another child.

One of the priorities when we chose our home was making sure that we were in an awesome school district but still close enough to a city to take advantage of all the fun things to do there. Our street is lined with cherry trees that blossom in the spring. In the neighborhood there are lots of families with young children (including some of our son’s classmates!) but also older residents who love being the neighborhood grandparents.

Our cozy house backs up on the woods and playground where the neighborhood kids like to play nerf, basketball, and tennis. In the basement Josh has a full workshop that he used to build Miles a playset and submarine bunkbed.

Even though we’re right next to the woods, we’re just a few minutes walk away from activities. Most days we walk to the playground, library, tennis court or pool. We like taking the train to explore Philadelphia, New York City, or downtown DC especially to see the Smithsonian or explore the monuments.

There is no way we can know what you are going through, but one thing we can say is that we want to know you better. We want you to know how very excited we are to be adopting again, and how excited we are about growing our family. As experienced adoptive parents we hope this letter can provide an insight into how we’ve raised our son since his adoption years ago.

We met on the school bus in third grade and we just celebrated our fifteenth anniversary. Growing up together meant that our friends have made fun of us for finishing each other’s sentences since we were teenagers. We’ve talked about adoption from the very beginning of our relationship. The best day of our lives was the day we met our son Miles and his birth mother.

We live in the Maryland suburbs where Josh works on satellites and Joanna works as a medical librarian. We have a cozy home on a street lined with cherry trees right behind a county park. Our neighborhood is filled with children of all age ranges and the local elementary school is just around the corner.

Even though we both work full time, our lives are very family focused. We will both take Miles to the bus in the morning, and he will go off to second grade. His elementary school is awesome, and his teachers are even better than the ones we were lucky to have growing up. One or both of us meets Miles at the bus in the afternoon and we spend the night cooking, hanging out, doing homework and reading, or working on one of our hobbies. You can always find Josh building electronics or woodworking. Joanna will find her guitar and learn yet another Taylor Swift song to annoy Josh with! On the weekends we love doing activities in the area, whether that’s going to a museum, going to the pool, visiting family or watching a movie at home (our current favorite is K-Pop Demon Hunters).

Our parenting style focuses on being caring but setting good boundaries. We work to be emotionally supportive and open. Above all, we talk to each other a lot. Overall, our goal is to raise our son and any future adoptive child to be good people. We work to make sure to teach that life is not about the fanciest car or the most famous job. We want our kids to be the kind of people that will go and sit with the child that is alone in the cafeteria.

We both grew up in families with siblings, and after having one child we know that we have even more love to share. We want our son to be able to have that experience too. We watch Miles interact with his friend’s younger siblings and we see how caring and protective he is. We know that he will be a great older brother, and he has told us how excited he is.

After adopting once, we understand that everyone wants the level of contact that they are most comfortable with. To us, an involved birth family means more people who love the child and that can only ever be a good thing. If you prefer to have less contact, we will do whatever is right for you and your child. Before this child can even understand, we will be speaking to them positively, openly and honestly about you and about being adopted, as we have with Miles. We will send you pictures and letters of their life, and we are open to exchanging emails, phone calls, and visits with you.

Above all, we want to raise another child with the knowledge that they are loved by us and by their first parents.

Josh & Joanna