About us: For prospective birthmoms/birthcouples

[thebluestsky]

Hi there

I'm Julie. My husband Kevin and I have been married for almost 4 years now. We're both caucasian. Ethnically I'm something like half Jewish (Russian and German) and half Scotch-Irish and he's a half Greek and a quarter Jewish and a quarter miscellaneous. I'm from Atlanta, GA and he's from Long Island NY. Oddly, neither of us has much of an accent.

We met in 1999 at an open mic night in Atlanta, where he was running the sound and I was playing music. We have both been songwriting since our early days, and have enjoyed playing in a number of bands and ensembles over the years. My main instrument is guitar but I'm learning djembe (a type of drum) and banjo. Kevin plays guitar, bass, and trombone. Neither of us aspires to be rock stars; we just love making music. We play in public a few times each month, just for fun. Anyway, after we met we became "music friends" for a couple of years. I was living in Virginia, but whenever I came to Atlanta we would get together and play. Then somehow we fell in love and dated for two years before moving to the Shenandoah Valley together. We were married the following year.

We live about halfway between our hometowns (8 hours each way) in a college town in Virginia. We moved here in 2003 when Kevin got a job teaching at the university. We both work at the same school. Right now I work in an academic office. Kevin is an amazing teacher and his students love how much effort he puts into teaching them, even when they hate the subject (he teaches organic chemistry, which is notorious for being the hardest college course). For the past 4 1/2 years I have taught composition and Women's Studies as extra part-time jobs, but I am taking a break from those now so that I can have more time to enjoy life and be a good mom.

We love where we live but have considered eventually relocating to be closer to family and for me to be able to pursue a career of my own (don't worry - I'm talking about a family-friendly career, not a high-powered business exec never-at-home career). We want to wait until we see what it is like being parents before we make any big decisions. My job is the low-stress kind that ends at 5:00 and does not come home with me, so it might be perfect when I am a working mom. I plan to take 6-8 weeks off when we adopt a baby, and then one of our friends who does in-home childcare will care for the baby while I am at work.

It's beautiful here, nestled between the Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington National Forest. We were nervous about moving to a conservative town "in the middle of nowhere" but found that the community here is far more diverse than we expected, with large Latino, Russian, and Kurdish populations. Our city's motto is "the friendly city" and we're were surprised by how true it has been. We have a great network of friends, colleagues, and church people who are going to be a wonderful support system when we become parents. We have met many adoptive families and transracial adoptions seem to be the norm among our friends. It seems like we have friends of every race and ethnicity you could think of, so we hope our kid will not feel out of place in the world, whatever the color.

We look forward to every bit of being parents, and have had a lot of practice with all of our friends' babies and our nephew and niece. I have never seen a grown man entertain babies the way Kevin can. Kids think he's awesome, probably because he teaches them cool tricks and makes really goofy faces and noises. I'm more the one they want to sit with to read or talk or play cars with. We're both pretty flexible, though, and enjoy keeping kids company.

We love taking little adventures, whether it's a week wandering through the French countryside or a week camping in a tent in Utah or a day hike with llamas an hour from here. We enjoy going for walks in the national parks and canoeing and fishing on nice days. We both love cooking, playing with our band, watching movies, and doing creative artsy stuff. Kevin enjoys running. I like reading and writing. We have three kid-friendly dogs (1 big mix and 2 pugs) and a big yard with a tree fort. Our caseworker calls our house "modest" but I guess that's all relative - it's huge compared to Kevin's family's houses on crowded Long Island, and tiny compared to the sprawling monster-houses in Atlanta. There's plenty of room for us, 3 dogs, and 1 to 3 kids.

We both grew up Methodist. I also went to a Catholic High School and an Episcopalian camp. Now we're Unitarians because its a religion that allows us to honor all of the faith traditions that have made us who we are. If you're not familiar with UUs, we mainly believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and in trying to be good people, with all that entails (www.uua.org).

That's all I can think of to tell you right now. I'd love to hear about you, or to answer any questions you have. Our adoption agency is Commonwealth Catholic Charities. They usually do semi-open adoptions, where we would know each others' first names but not exactly where each other lives. We could meet but all of our interactions would be through the agency. CCC can also do open or closed adoptions if that's the birthparents' preference. They're really there to serve the birthparents and find parents for babies, not the other way around, so they encouraged us to do some networking and see if we connect with any potential birthparents in other ways. I can't imagine what this is like for you, and I'm not going to pretend I know how difficult it must be. If you do choose to place your baby, there are lots of families out there who would be great parents. If for some reason you click with us, though, all I can say is that we'll honor you by being the absolute best parents we can be, and we will love sharing our lives with our son or daughter (or both - we'll take twins, too!).

Julie

 

[Fairymommy02]

Mar. 6, 2008 at 12:09 PM

I think all of that is great information for someone who may see you as a potential parent to know but one small detail is missing. Like the Why have you chosen to adopt. I know it may be a sad complicated story but it's something i would want to know if i was going to consider to for my child....

I have thought about being a surrogate for someone but have never been able to decide if it was right for me.

[thebluestsky]

Mar. 6, 2008 at 2:28 PM Please see the next post for the answer to Fairymommy02's question.

(Original Poster)