Basic Info
Michael
Age: 39
Ethnicity: White
Religion: Christian
John
Age: 35
Ethnicity: Hispanic/Latino, White
Religion: Christian
Michael & John
District of Columbia
Intro
About
Work & Education
Michael
Education: Graduate Degree (JD)
Profession: Attorney
John
Education: Graduate Degree (MPP)
Profession: Economist
Post-Adoption Relationship
Open (Open to contact, phone calls, in person visits before adoption. Sharing photos and letters after placement. Visits at neutral location after adoption, etc.). If you want a more closed adoption, we would honor that request as well.
Environment
Country: USA
State: District of Columbia
Us Region: North Eastern US
Parent Relationship: Married
Parent Neighborhood: Urban
Parent Years Together: 10 to 15 years
Parent Residency: House
Parent Pets: 1 cat
Children At Home: Adopted children
Sexual Orientation: Same-sex parents
Preferences for a child
Age: Newborn to 1 year of age
Gender: Either
Multiple Children: Not open to multiple children
Race/Ethnicity: All
Special Needs: Mild or medically correctable, Alcohol exposed, Smoking exposed, Drug exposed, Emotional/mental disorders in family
Certification 
Gladney Center for Adoption verified this family completed an adoption homestudy including: background checks, character references, official interviews, required training, home inspection, financial review, etc. and are approved for adoption.
Hi, We're Mike & John!
On a hike with Mike's family in Upstate NY
Hello!
Thank you for your brave & selfless decision to consider an adoption plan. If we’re the right family for you, you’ll always be an important part of the baby’s life. We’re committed to full openness & ensuring you’re comfortable & included.
We’re Mike and John. Thank you so much for taking the time to learn about us and our journey to grow our family through adoption. We hope that this profile book provides a helpful glimpse into our family!
We’ve been together since 2012 and have always known that we wanted to bring children into our family through adoption. We started on that journey in 2024, when we adopted our son, Ben. If we are chosen again as adoptive parents, we promise to provide your child with a caring, stable home filled with unconditional love.
We want to thank you for your brave and selfless decision to consider an adoption plan for your baby. If we are the right family for you, you will always be an important part of the baby’s life, and we are committed to full openness and ensur...
We’re Mike and John. Thank you so much for taking the time to learn about us and our journey to grow our family through adoption. We hope that this profile book provides a helpful glimpse into our family!
We’ve been together since 2012 and have always known that we wanted to bring children into our family through adoption. We started on that journey in 2024, when we adopted our son, Ben. If we are chosen again as adoptive parents, we promise to provide your child with a caring, stable home filled with unconditional love.
We want to thank you for your brave and selfless decision to consider an adoption plan for your baby. If we are the right family for you, you will always be an important part of the baby’s life, and we are committed to full openness and ensuring you are comfortable and included.
— Mike & John
Our Story
We have always known that we wanted to grow our family via adoption. We know that parenting isn’t easy, but are excited to share our home, traditions, and love with a child.
A family photo on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol
About Us
Our family is built on a foundation of love, support, and open communication, which we intend to share with any children that join our family in the future. But our relationship is more than that!
We love to have fun, and spend much of our free time with friends for dinner or brunch, board games, and play dates or “adventures” in town with our little one. We also love to travel—or even explore locally in Washington, DC—whether it’s trying (or cooking up!) new foods, having new experiences, or meeting new people. As a couple, we’ve been on many adventures together, from touring ice caves in Iceland, to swimming with manta rays in Bora Bora, to celebrating a good friend’s wedding in India. And we’ve shared this love for travel with Ben, who has already visited friends and family across the US. We plan to share our love for fun and adventure with our growing family.
We’re also animal lovers. In 2017, we adopted our second cat, Oliver, a ginger tomcat, who is now a senior! Our first cat, Alastor, joined our family in 2013 and was with us for four years until his passing in 2017. Oliver is a complete sweetheart, welcoming our friends and visitors with cuddles, purrs, and a playful demeanor. He’s adjusted wonderfully to having a little brother and is excited about the idea of welcoming a new member to our family!
Why We're Adopting Again
We have always known that we wanted to grow our family via adoption. The day we met and brought home Ben was the best day of our lives—as if each step in our journey together had been leading to that moment. Through all the joys and challenges of parenting, Ben’s adoption taught us that we are living for something bigger than just ourselves and our individual goals: we are each living for the family we are creating together. We are excited and feel so privileged to continue to build our family through adoption.
Our Story
We have a modern love story. We first met in 2012 while out with friends at a local bar. We immediately hit it off. After dating for a year, decided to begin joining our lives by moving in together. In 2015, John was accepted into a graduate program in the United Kingdom. Mike decided to quit his job and join John on this tremendous adventure— a leap of faith that really cemented our commitment to one another.
Shortly after we returned to the US, we took a vacation to visit John’s brother, embarking on a road trip from Denver to the Grand Canyon, stopping for hikes at the gorgeous national parks along the way. During a morning hike at Arches National Park, John proposed! Although we’d talked about getting married for years, Mike was still incredibly surprised (perhaps because John’s proposal was interrupted by chipmunks trying to steal our breakfast).
We got married in fall 2018 in DC, joined by our friends and families, with a close friend as our officiant. In 2019, we bought our first home, where we still live—and where we have been busy nesting with our son, Ben, who we adopted in 2024.
Meet Mike (by John)
Mike grew up in Upstate New York in a loving family. His parents, two siblings and their spouses, and our four nieces and nephews live in his hometown, and we see them often. Since adopting Ben, we’ve seen even more of Mike’s parents, who are so thrilled to have another grandchild—and his whole family is ecstatic about welcoming another child into the family through adoption.
Mike has always had a great rapport with children. He worked for years with young kids, including as an assistant preschool teacher, and he had originally planned to become an elementary school teacher before deciding to become a public interest lawyer. One of his first jobs was with a nonprofit, advocating for children in foster care and adoptive families. It has been incredible seeing Mike shine as a dad, translating those experiences as an early childhood educator and advocate for adoptive families into being an incredible role model for Ben.
Mike is fun-loving and easy-going. He enjoys playing board and video games and solving puzzles. He has an artistic side too. He’s famous among our friends and family for his custom construction paper birthday cards for each of our nieces and nephews—a tradition he plans to continue as our family grows! He also loves to bake and cook, whipping up tasty bites for our family to share around the dinner table.
He’s also a big reader. Since he was little, Mike’s mother has worked as the storyteller for their hometown library. Thanks to his mom, Mike is an expert storyteller, who now takes Ben to our neighborhood library weekly to pick new books for bedtime reading.
Meet John (by Mike)
John grew up in southern Indiana with two loving parents and an older brother. He moved to Washington, DC in 2010 after college to start a career in energy policy. As a child, John enjoyed traveling across the US and overseas to visit family. His career has allowed him to continue traveling and he’s eager to share the excitement of travel with our growing family.
He’s an environmentalist at heart, and Boy Scouts was a big influence in his childhood. He tries to find any excuse he can to go hiking on vacation, and he often talks about getting outdoors as a family. In college, he was a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, where he spent the summer taking high schoolers on weeklong backpacking treks. John is the family gardener and enjoys time outside with Ben, whether at the park or just walking our neighborhood.
Some of John’s fondest childhood memories involve little moments: long bike rides with his dad, helping his mom decorate the house for Christmas, blueberry picking with his grandma, and his parents cheering him on at swim meets. He has enjoyed sharing —and creating new—family traditions with Ben, and is excited to see those traditions grow with our family.
As a dad, John does an amazing job being the same kind of cheerleader for Ben that his parents were for him and his older brother. This includes providing a nurturing, supportive environment for Ben to fearlessly explore his world and pursue the things that spark joy. John can’t wait to provide that same incredible love and support to Ben’s future little sibling.
Meet Ben
Ben is super excited about becoming a big brother! A playful toddler, Ben loves spending time with other kids and babies, and is incredibly gentle, fun-loving, and curious. He is known for being super friendly (and cuddly—he loves to give hugs) with us, friends, and classmates. Ben has a big smile and loves to laugh with his friends and family.
Ben enjoys music (whether listening or playing music himself, and he often dances along), reading books with us and on his own, exploring and climbing, and playing silly games. He is incredibly adventurous and likes to join in our family activities, whether it’s cooking, cleaning (he is a big fan of the vacuum), going to the store or our neighborhood library, or showing love to our cat, Oliver. We love watching Ben grow and learn every day and have relished every second of being his parents.
We’re all so excited about Ben having a little brother or sister. We’re both very close with our siblings (Ben has five aunts and uncles) and have always known we want our children to grow up with that same kind of special sibling bond. We know that Ben will be a fantastic big brother, and are so excited to continue to grow our family and fill our lives with even more love and laughter.
Our Home, Family & Traditions
We live in a vibrant and diverse family-friendly neighborhood in Washington, DC, and we're privileged to have many close friends nearby and with supportive extended families.
Ben’s grandparents and his Uncle Paul joined us for his adoption finalization in 2024
Our Home, Friends & Community
We live in a vibrant and diverse family-friendly neighborhood in Washington, DC. We love our community: several neighbors have young kids or are just starting their families, including friends across the street who have a little boy Ben’s age and who Ben has playdates with often.
Our house is just a few blocks from a public elementary school, a Spanish bilingual public charter school, a playground and recreation center, and a public library. We are also active in our community association and love connecting with our neighbors, who make living in a big city feel like a close-knit community.
When searching for our home in 2019, we specifically sought a place we felt we could grow into as a family. We were delighted to find a spacious home in the city with some yard space for outdoor play, but only minutes by car or Metro from all the necessities.
Our home is bright and welcoming, and decorated with reminders of our friends, family, and good times—whether photographs of our family and travel, homemade artwork, or the dozens of magnets on our fridge from trips we’ve taken together. We love to host friends and family—whether for brunch or dinner, a game night, or a longer visit—and we’ve focused on decorating our home so its cozy, comfortable, and warm for everyone who visits (and lives here!).
One of the best parts of our home and community is that many of our close friends—our local “family” —live nearby, several of whom have newborns and young children. Though we see our families regularly, since they live several hundred miles away, we’re blessed to have our community of friends here in DC to lean on— and Ben loves spending time with these honorary “aunts,” “uncles,” and “cousins.”
Our Family
We are both privileged to have close, supportive extended families that we see several times a year. Although no immediate family members live in DC, we chat frequently with our families via text, phone calls, FaceTime, and WhatsApp, and visit with aunts, uncles, and cousins who live close by in Maryland and Virginia. And, in 2024, John’s family had a mini reunion and are planning to repeat that tradition each summer.
Mike’s parents and siblings live in upstate New York, where he grew up. His family hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations each year, which include Mike’s siblings, nieces and nephews, uncles, cousins, and their kids. When visiting, we spend a lot of time with family, whether baking together, going swimming, attending our nieces and nephews sports games or performances, or simply hanging out. They all adore Ben and are excited about welcoming a new child into the family.
John’s parents still live in southern Indiana, while his older brother lives in Colorado. His dad comes from a tightly knit, German farming community in Michigan, while his mom grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. John grew up speaking Spanish with his mom and abuela (a skill he plans to pass on to our children), traveling to visit family in Venezuela, and learning to make (and eating!) arepas, empanadas, and fried plantains. Most summers and at Thanksgiving and Christmas, his family would drive to Michigan to visit his paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.
Our Traditions
As a family, we have embraced each other’s family traditions and worked to create traditions of our own. For Father’s Day, we often travel to Syracuse to play golf with Mike’s dad. For Christmas 2024, we spent the evening (after Ben’s bedtime) with John’s parents making hallacas (Venezuelan tamales), which are holiday favorites. And one of our favorite holiday traditions is to do a Christmas Eve driving tour of neighborhood Christmas lights—something both our families do that we’ve continued here in DC!
Before You Go,
Thank you for taking the time to get to know more about our family. We are truly grateful for your open heart and the great act of love that you are showing by considering an adoption plan for your child.
We hope to meet you soon!
Thank you for taking the time to get to know more about our family. We hope that what we’ve shared has given you a picture of us, our home and family, and our hopes and dreams for being adoptive parents. We are truly grateful for your open heart and the great act of love that you are showing by considering an adoption plan for your child.
If selected as adoptive parents, we promise:
To provide a welcoming, safe, and nurturing home to the child full of unconditional love.
To surround the child with friends, family, and traditions that enrich their life.
To provide the best possible opportunities for self-discovery and learning.
To teach the child about how much you love them and how you are the one who chose for us all to become a family.
To open our hearts and life to you. There will always be a role for you in the child’s life, if you choose, and however you feel comfortable.
With our sincere gratitude,
— Mike & John
If selected as adoptive parents, we promise:
With our sincere gratitude,
— Mike & John
Post-Adoption Relationship
Open (Open to contact, phone calls, in person visits before adoption. Sharing photos and letters after placement. Visits at neutral location after adoption, etc.). If you want a more closed adoption, we would honor that request as well.
Certification
Gladney Center for Adoption verified this family completed an adoption home study including: background checks, character references, official interviews, required training, home inspection, financial review, etc. and are approved for adoption.