From the very beginning of our relationship, one of the things John and I always agreed on was our desire to be parents.  In fact, his love for his friends and family is one of the things that first drew me to him.  John is the godfather to our eldest niece and I am the godmother to my closest friend’s son.  Before having our son, some of our happiest times were having our friends’ children and five nieces and nephews running around our backyard.   Now that our son has arrived, our weekends are dedicated to our family.  Every weekend we try to do something new and fun with Christopher.  The past three months he has been taking swimming lessons and he enjoyed them so much we have signed him up again in the fall.

Our strong desire for a family led us to begin our journey toward parenthood very early on in our marriage.  We both agreed that we did not want to wait to become parents, but instead wanted to start a family right away.  After several months of trying without success, we decided that being parents was our priority and began infertility treatments.  We continued for over 5 years before finally learning on Easter Sunday 2006 that it was unlikely that John and I would be able to parent a biological child together.

As hard as it had been for us to wait to have a family, the mutual disappointments we suffered only helped to cement our commitment to each other and our desire to become parents.  The stress of all the medical procedures takes its toll even on the best marriages and we saw our share of friends not make it through that stress.  John was with me every step of the process and like a true partner he came with me to every appointment and even helped me administer my medications.  When we finally determined that it was time to cease all of our treatments, our goal became to adopt to build our family.  I had already done a ton of research on domestic adoption and it just felt right.  Once we made the decision, we jumped in feet first and never looked back.  We completed our homestudy in July of 2006 and had our son home with us less than 8 weeks later.

Our Son

In September 2006, our dream of becoming parents finally became a reality.  On September 13, our beautiful son was placed in our arms forever.  He has brought more joy to our lives than we ever could have imagined and we cherish every moment and each milestone with him.  Each day with him is filled with excitement, as he learns how to do new things and begins to explore.  He has been thriving and at the age of a year took those treasured first steps and now at 16 months is running around the house.  He is also developing so much personality – he knows exactly what he wants and what he doesn’t.  At 6 months he was crawling, but now he is so much more interactive.  He has been an extremely active baby.  His first word was mama – which made my heart absolutely swell.  Now he says just a few other discernable words, Oscar (for our cat although it sounds more like ocka) and meow.  He babbles constantly and its only a matter of time before he is talking up a storm.   Perhaps my favorite quality that he has developed is his love of animals.  Recently we took him to a birthday party at a farm and he had his first pony ride.  He loved it and giggled the entire time.  He has absolutely no fear either – he walked right up to a goat and stuck his hand out to feed it.  Best of all is the relationship he has developed with our pets.  He is so gentle that they love to play with him.  Most of all he loves being with mommy and daddy.  It melts my heart to see his face light up first thing in the morning when he sees us for the first time.