Howdy! We are Josh and Emily, and we thank you for reading our profile. We have been in love and having fun for about 20 years together and would love to share our love and fun with a child. We live on the southside of Indianapolis. Josh works with AI and machine learning as a data scientist and Emily is a children’s librarian at a public library. We are excited to expand our family!
We met by chance when two of our friends brought us to a swing dancing night. Neither of us knew how to dance, but we partnered up for a lesson at the start of the evening and by the end, we had talked for hours! The rest was history (and we still don’t know how to dance!). We were married three years later, in 2005. We make each other laugh daily and give each other unconditional love and support. Josh was born in Fort Wayne, but grew up on the east side of Indy, and Emily moved around as a child (Phoenix, AZ; Atlanta, GA; and Jasper, IN), but ended up going to college in Indianapolis. We are grateful to have lots of family and friends in town as well as across the country who are so supportive and ready to welcome a child with us.
We believe in meeting the world with kindness, empathy, and humor; accepting and appreciating others for who they are; and using our own self-knowledge to be authentic and true to our own values. We believe each child is their own person, deserving of respect and love, and our job as parents is to give them all the tools they need to become fully themselves. We embrace silliness and big feelings, give space for trying new things and not always getting it right, while providing structure and stability to feel grounded and safe. We celebrate uniqueness. We believe that we, and the world, are better when we learn about and appreciate differences, rather than being afraid or pretending they aren’t there. Our close family includes LGBT members, and we love and embrace them fully.
• Although we enjoy time with extended family with traditional food and gift-giving around the holidays, we try to keep Christmas Day to ourselves. We love to get Chinese takeout, stay in our pajamas all day and read and watch movies or TV. (One year, we watched the whole Lord of the Rings extended trilogy!)
• St. Nick’s Day is December 8th, and growing up, Emily’s family always put out stockings the night before. To this day, Emily’s parents mail a little care package “from St. Nick” to Emily, Josh, and her siblings. We look forward to carrying on this tradition in our family.
• For birthdays, Emily likes to make dinner and the dessert that the birthday person requests. Josh always requests the same meal, Emily’s brother, Dom (who also lives in Indy), tries something different each year. When it’s Emily’s birthday, we go out to eat!
• We eat dinner together nearly every night of the week. It’s an important time for both of us to share what we experienced during the day. As our family grows, we look forward to extending this as a way to enjoy life through our child’s eyes and connect with their experiences.
Our home represents us in many ways. We were attracted to its uniqueness. It was built in the 1950’s. We have a large fenced backyard, which we use to play games each summer (ladder golf, ring toss, cornhole, giant Jenga, Kubb, etc.). We have landscaping with lots of plants, rocks, and multiple mature trees making it perfect for adventures. This also attracts lots of wildlife to watch. Since we don’t have pets, families of squirrels, chipmunks and birds feel safe making their homes there – we’ve even seen raccoons, rabbits, opossums, groundhogs, and foxes visiting! The inside of our house is decorated with things that either we or our friends have made. Each room is decorated differently. Our favorite room is the sunroom, which is filled with plants. We have over a thousand books in our personal “library.” We look forward to changing how our house looks and feels by incorporating the growing and changing uniqueness and identity of a child. Just as our home represents us, we want that to change to represent our whole family! We’re also fortunate to live close to Josh’s family, Emily’s brother, and friends around the city. Our loved ones who live out of town are also looking forward to visiting and supporting us.
I feel so lucky to be with Josh. He is funny and interesting and likes to make me laugh. He is kind and caring, often going above and beyond to take care of his team at work, his friends, his family, and me. I appreciate that he is genuine and honest and we have great talks. He has excellent taste in music and movies, and I love that we can have fun anywhere – hiking, enjoying a new restaurant, traveling and exploring a new city, or just hanging out while reading together. I love that we have been our honest, nerdy, somewhat socially-awkward selves since the very beginning. Josh also is a very visual person and has a great, creative eye. He takes the lead in decorating our spaces and I’m always amazed at how unique and harmonious it turns out.
I remember when our nieces and nephew were young, Josh was the favorite uncle because he would spin them around and around in the backyard whenever we had a family get-together. He was always able to make the babies laugh by making funny faces and playing little games with them, too. Josh is going to be a great father, with lots of love and humor to share. I feel like his life experiences have given him a lot of empathy and understanding for life’s ups and downs, and he’s going to be a loving resource for a child.
I was told I only get a paragraph to describe all the things that make Emily so wonderful. Quite the challenge! She is patient and kind. She tries to see the best in people and treat everyone with compassion. This may be with challenging opinions, friends, family, or even me. We have periodic arguments, as all couples do, but she will always try to see it from my perspective, whether she agrees with it or not. She’s brave. Emily decided a few years back, she wanted to be more adventurous and outgoing; these are things outside of her comfort zone, but things she knew were important to her. She has made efforts to understand herself in order to become the person she wants to be. She has accomplished so much through self-love and the support of those around her! It has been an inspiration to me. She’s creative. She expresses this creativity in many ways. Through music, preparing for early literacy programs, or simply thoughtful insights about our mutual experiences in life. She almost always wins at games. Okay, I take that one back as something I admire about her. Don’t challenge her at yard games or darts! (You can let me win a few times, Emily!) Joking aside, I am, without doubt, a better person in so many ways because she is in my life as an adult. The impact she will make as a patient, kind, brave, and creative mother will be such a gift to whomever receives it (but not in yard games…she will NOT hold back).
Josh’s mother became pregnant in high school. She decided to place the child for adoption. It was a challenging choice for her. It was a closed adoption and she only regained contact with her birth child, Anne, more than thirty years later. Anne has been a part of our lives ever since. Both of their experiences have been very influential in our views of adoption and our desire for full openness between birth mother and child. We were attracted to Adoptions of Indiana because of their respect and centering of the birth family, and their support for openness. We respect the birth family’s wishes and look forward to working with you to forge a relationship that works for everyone.
We thank you for reading our profile and considering us. We are ready to open our hearts to a child, but we also have a lot of care for that child’s birth family. We want to extend loving openness in whatever way is most comfortable for you. Having a child involves a lot of change and we understand that it involves more than just us. Please know that your needs and wishes will be a part of our journey. We wish you all the best no matter what.
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