Roger and Cynthia

We’re honored that you’ve taken the time to get to know us; thank you for considering us as adoptive parents for your child. We hope this process of connecting with potential adoptive families brings assurance that your baby will be loved and cared for.

As we’ve built our life together over the past eight years, kids have been at the front of our mind. We have a lovely little house in a big yard with a giant oak tree, perfect for a swing! We’re fortunate to have an incredible community of close friends nearby–all loving families who look after each other–and they can’t wait to welcome your baby.

We would love for you to be part of your child’s milestones as they grow, in whatever way feels comfortable for you. We know there’s a lot to learn and discover about this journey, and we hope to create a relationship between all of us that brings comfort and joy, growing and maturing along with your baby.

We really want to have a family and have a lot of love to give. Over the past five years, sadly, we’ve lost five pregnancies. While we’ve experienced deep grief, it’s also led us to consider deeply what parenting means to us. Along the way, we decided that whether we had a successful pregnancy or not, we wanted adoption to be a part of our family story. We know we’ll be able to give a child a loving, stable home while raising them with strong values and helping them contribute great things to the world. If we are the right fit for you and your little one, we would feel incredibly honored to be part of your story.

We live with our sweet, playful dog Minnie and hang out with a wonderful community of close friends and family full of fun kiddos and loving adults who all look out for each other. In the evenings, we make dinner and eat together, then play a game or do a puzzle while listening to music or watching a show. Some evenings we spend at choir rehearsal and jazz combo class. On the weekends, we balance getting chores done with getting together with friends and family, going for a hike or snowshoe, seeing a friend in a play, or taking day trips to favorite local spots, like a pumpkin patch or the train show.

Fun Facts:

• We met in middle school.
• We play Dungeons & Dragons.
• We enjoy doing DIY projects around our home, building furniture, and thinking of creative things to do with the massive amounts of fruit we pick every year.
• Each year at Halloween we create group costumes with our goddaughter and her parents (Minnie gets in on the action, too!).

Cynthia is an amazing partner and the most brilliant person I know. She’s kind, gentle, hilarious, thoughtful, and empathetic. She’s a fantastic singer and a talented actor and dancer. She’s also a wizard with kids and always seems to know exactly what to say and what to do to keep them engaged and on track in a way where they feel seen, heard, and empowered. She’s going to be an incredible mother.

Cynthia has been a lifelong singer, dancer, and theatre artist. She loves creative storytelling, contemplative dance, and singing in choir and casually with friends. She’s taught “create your own play” camps for kiddos and studied infant developmental movement.

Roger is going to be the best Dad! He is kind, thoughtful, supportive, and hard-working. He’s so good with our friends’ kids–they adore him and always have a great time with their uncle Roger, or Gagi, as he’s also known. I’m continually impressed by his ability to teach himself to do new things, and the way he sticks with things until he figures them out. I couldn’t ask for a better partner.

Roger has played music for as long as he can remember. As a professional upright bassist he specializes in jazz and Latin music. He performs regularly in the community and runs a non-profit jazz school, where he also serves on the board of directors. His mom’s side of the family is very musical, and get-togethers often involve a lot of “picking and grinning”, as they like to call it. He hopes to nurture in his child a love for music from the very beginning.

We live outside a beautiful small city between the mountains and the bay, and a short trip from Seattle and Vancouver, Canada. We have a large yard with a lot of fruit trees (and we keep planting more!). Some of the special things we love to do nearby are visiting the Tulip Festival in the spring, blueberry picking in the summer, and trips to the San Juan Islands on the Washington State ferries. Bellingham is a very artistic community, with a lot of music, theater, and dance. We have a big collection of board games (“and dog toys!” says Minnie) and a pantry full of apple jelly and pear preserves from those fruit trees we’re always trying to keep up with.

We’re fortunate to have a very supportive community of extended family and friends. We have costume parties, game nights, and barbecues with our close friends and their little ones. Cynthia’s mom and niece live nearby and regularly join us for dinner. We have frequent video calls with Roger’s mom, dad and brother and meet up a few times a year for camping, fishing, and other adventures. A highlight of a recent trip was introducing Roger’s mom and dad to Dungeons & Dragons–they were naturals! We sometimes travel with Cynthia’s mom to Colorado for Thanksgiving festivities with Roger’s extended family, or to celebrate Christmas with Cynthia’s sister and brother-in-law. We try to make it to Japan frequently to visit Roger’s grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins, and their young children. Both our families are known to gather in the living room to sing and play music together!

Our goddaughter Eliza Pearl and her parents are very important people in our lives. We consider them family, and they are so excited to meet your baby and be there with us every step of the way. Eliza loves putting on shows, dancing, singing, building things, drawing, and playing with the other kids in our group of friends. Every outfit she wears must include the color purple. She’s five years old now and dreams of being a big sister.

We’re open to adopting a baby of any race and plan to incorporate their cultural heritage into all our lives from the start. We’re already a biracial family, and we know that no matter who we adopt it’s likely that they will not match our own racial makeup exactly, and we’re excited about expanding our world in that way. We also understand that there are many things we don’t yet know and are ready to learn more.

• Every summer we go on a camping trip in the mountains with friends, where the kids get to go fishing and swimming, ride bikes, explore, and play outside.
• We take regular visits to Japan and Colorado to connect with family and can’t wait introduce them to our little one.
• One of our goddaughter’s favorite traditions is after dinner dance parties (we’ve built the best playlist)
• Other traditions include trips to the beach, planting trees on our property, making music together, and birthday barbecues
• We are so excited to bring your little one into these traditions and grow to include traditions from their background into our lives as part of our shared story.

We can’t wait to see who your little one will become, and we promise to always support them in becoming whoever they want to be. We want to instill in them kindness, curiosity, compassion, integrity, honesty, and community mindedness. We’ll sing and dance with them, read them a ton of books, explore outside, and follow their interests wherever they might go. We’ll surround them with loving, supportive, and trustworthy friends and family. As parents we’ll create a foundation of comfort and bonding that lets them learn and explore.

We can’t imagine the difficult decision you’re making and how challenging this experience must be. But we want you to know that if you were to choose us to raise your little one, we promise to give them a stable and loving home and every opportunity in the world that we can possibly provide. Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know a little about us. We look forward to connecting with you, and to the special relationship we might have.