Waiting Family Profiles

Home Location: Twin Cities Metro

Family Status: Couple with Children

Children in Home: One

Child Ethnicity: African American, Asian, Caucasian, East Indian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American

Hi, we are Joe, Missy, and Liam. We approach everything in life with a little humor (or a lot, depending on the situation).  Life is too short to get hung up on the “small things”–so we find humor is a great way to help balance the stress of life. We don’t live the cookie cutter life: what fun is there in that?  We are a family of big hearts, ready to love our newest member.

Our Story…

Joe and I met in 2009.  We met at trivia night, and have continued to love showing off our penchants for useless knowledge ever since.  We started on evenly-matched teams with a heated rivalry.  One week, our teams combined (due to low attendance and because no one wanted the “cooking school” team to win)–and Joe and I formally met.  We beat the chefs, and Joe and I traded numbers.  We were able to continue to slowly get to know each other outside of our weekly battle of “wits”.  Finally, Joe asked me out.  We’ve been together ever since, marrying in 2012.

Joe and I share a love of bowling, board games, movies, and mini golf.  We have a standing board game night once a month.  We are out of practice with bowling, but spent many years in bowling leagues.  We formed a traveling mini golf league with many of our friends.  We enjoy going to cooking classes to learn to cook new dishes.  We’ve added many tasty dishes to our repertoire: Pad Thai, Panang Curry, and homemade pasta are a few of our favorites.  We like traveling, and plan on doing some RV camping in the near future to see all the national parks.  We also enjoy supporting our local sports teams.  I’ve been a Minnesota Twins fan since I was a small child.  Joe is the hockey fan, cheering on the Minnesota Wild as often as he can.

Hi, I’m Missy…

I grew up in Woodbury, as the 3rd of 4 children with 2 brothers and a sister.  My dad was a mechanic, and my mom a special education teacher who became a stay-at-home mom.  By the time I was 10 years old, I had a monopoly on our street as THE babysitter. I have loved being around kids my entire life: making up silly games, planning art projects, and participating in their unpredictableness.

I had dreamed of becoming an elementary school teacher to spend my days with kids.  After a few semesters of college, I left school and started work at a child center, where I stayed for 12 years. I loved working and being around kids because they are so open and honest: they will tell you when your hair is a mess.  Watching kids see the world fresh is an amazing privilege. It helps put life in perspective at times. I have been a stay-at-home mom since our son Liam was born.  It has allowed me to be silly, and messy, and watch my child grow every day.

In my free time, I enjoy sewing, reading, cooking, baking, watching movies, or just a little time with friends.  A novice at sewing, I have taught myself how to quilt and it has become my favorite hobby.  I also love making recipes that have been handed down from my grandmas.  It makes me feel like they are still here with me.  Making my grandmothers’ recipes allows me to share their love with my own family and loved ones.

Hi, I’m Joe…

I grew up in Cottage Grove as the youngest of three kids. My family is very close and get together for every occasion possible. I got my first job at 15 and have had a job pretty much ever since, including working through school. Part way through college I was able to secure a job that took me out of school into a full time career and have been working in one form of obscure software development or another.  But work is just what we do so that we can have the personal time we want. I have always positioned myself so that my work can support my family life in the best way possible. This has continued to today where I have found myself working at a company that not only supports our family so that Missy can stay home with Liam during the days, but also allows me to be present at Liam’s events, conferences, and appointments.

I like both watching and playing hockey, cooking, podcasts, playing video games, watching movies, and having board game nights with friends. We  go to a trivia night once a week with my sister and her family as well as hosting a monthly board game night with friends.

Our Son, Liam…

We had Liam in 2014. He was born at 33 weeks and spent 2 weeks in the NICU until we were able to bring him home.  He has turned into the most amazing kiddo.  He has the biggest heart.  If he hears that someone is sad or hurt, he immediately wants to soothe them.  One day, his teacher told us that at snack time another child was sitting by themself, and Liam picked up his snack and went over to sit by him so he wouldn’t be lonely.  Liam is over the moon excited to become a big brother, and has told us that he wants his sibling to sleep in his room with him.  When we asked why, Liam told us that if his sibling is scared at night, he will be there so his sibling won’t have to be scared anymore.

Liam was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 years old.  He is considered mild on the spectrum, and has been thriving.  He looks at the world differently than most, and it is refreshing to see it through his eyes.  He takes things very literally, which causes lots of wonderfully humorous moments.  Parenting him has taught us to think outside the box.  Now, we pretty much live outside the box.

Our Puppers…

We have 2 dogs.  Tilly is a 2 year old lab/golden mix.  She is a mother hen.  She follows any children in our home around, loving them, and trying to keep them out of trouble.  She has yet to meet a person or animal she doesn’t love on sight.

Winston is our young puppy.  He was a stray with his littermates, and after a rough couple months living on his own, he now lives a life of leisure.  He just wants to cuddle and be loved.  He has learned from Tilly that everyone is a friend.

Our village…

We moved to Woodbury and into our dream home in November of 2018.  Our home is nestled in the middle of both our families; both sides of our family all live under 10 minutes from our home.  This allows for last minute dinners with family, or quick drop-ins to say hi.  We are all able to make it to hockey games, soccer practices, school plays, and dance recitals.

Our neighborhood is truly amazing.  Almost every home has kids, and all summer long they just run the neighborhood.  We have a pool only for our development, so in the summer we spend a great deal of time there.  We even have a couple of good sledding hills for the winter.  This neighborhood reminds us of where we grew up, and we are so happy to be able to give that feeling to our kids.

Joe and I have the most amazing support system in our family, friends, and community.  I am part of an online support group for moms with kids on the spectrum.  It allows us to share stories, words of encouragement, and commiserate in the hard when needed.  We have a group of friends that is truly family.  We meet monthly to see each other.  In the summer we have large monthly BBQs that allow our kids (ages 10 months to 16 years of age) to play together. In this time of isolation, our support system won’t let any member be isolated–we support each other with virtual hugs, dropped off meals and groceries, and gifts to those who need it most. Our “village” is excited to meet its newest member.

Our hopes for you and your family…

We hope to welcome you into our family.

Our hope is for you and your family to become part of our family.  Being able to have more seats around the table at holidays or special occasions with you here to share in them, will make them even more memorable.  Our opinion is that the more love a child has, the better.  That being said, we are happy to work with you and your family to find the balance that you need to feel comfortable.  We are here for you as well.

We hope to create a safe, secure, loving environment for our child.

We want our child to feel loved.  We want them to feel safe.  And we want them to feel secure.  To create that, we feel being open about how they became a part of our family is important.  We feel that the child having communication and connections to you as well helps aid this.  We also have a large extended family that is excited to have another child to love and spoil.  They are looking forward to adding the child’s birth family to our family gatherings.

We promise honesty.

We promise honesty to both you and our child.  We don’t shy away from hard topics.  We approach them with tact, love, and appropriateness.  Neither of us believe in hiding things in the closet.  If you start talking about difficult topics from the start, they never have a chance to become big issues.  We promise to always talk about adoption with love and acceptance.  We plan to continue to add to our books that have adoption represented, so as our child grows, they will not see it as a negative.  We will carry this honesty to how you and your family are important to our family.  As well as what is going on with our child.

We promise to have our child feel represented.

We know that seeing yourself represented in your world is extremely important in creating good self esteem.  If your family and our child have a different ethnic or religious background, we want to embrace it.  We will seek out media, toys, traditions, and social connections to help establish this.  Celebrating your traditions with our child helps them keep that connection to who they are and where they came from.

We promise to love our child unconditionally.

Loving a child is vital.  We promise to always love our child.  On the days our child is sweet and loving, it’s easy.  On the days our child is testing boundaries it is still easy.  Children are supposed to push limits, that is how they learn.  Being a parent also means being your child’s safe space.  When they come home from a hard day at school, or playing with friends, we are their space to let down.  Masking should never be needed at home.  We as parents get to see the hard emotions, and that’s ok.  It means we are doing our job as parents correctly.  It allows us to help teach them how to handle them with love and grace.

We promise to support our child.

Our child is going to struggle at times in life.  Sadly, it is part of this world.  As a parent, our job is to help.  Sometimes that looks like getting any additional help needed (ie medical, therapeutic, scholastic, etc) to help them learn the skills to succeed.  Sometimes that looks like gently guiding them to a solution that they are comfortable in.  Sometimes it looks like being an advocate.  And sometimes it looks like hugging them and just holding them until the storm passes.

We promise to adapt as we go.

Life is full of twists and turns.  We can imagine and plan our life just so, but life happens how it happens.  We have learned to adapt to life.  We promise to learn how to best parent our child.  No child has a handbook for easy reference.  So we learn as we go.  What we have found to work with Liam, doesn’t mean it will work for another child.

I want to thank you for taking the time to meet us.  We are grateful you are looking at us as prospective parents to your child.  I imagine the path that has brought you, the birth family, to this decision has been difficult.  I hope that our paths can merge and we can travel forward together.