We’re Aidan and Michael. We want to start by sending you a huge thank you for your incredible courage and for taking the time to get to know us. We truly admire the selfless strength it takes to make this decision, and we are so honored to be considered as a home for your baby. Since we met back in 2014, our lives have been filled with laughter, adventure, and a deep love for our family (and our cat!). We hope that as you read our story, you’ll see the warmth, stability, and joyful future we can offer your child. Thank you for letting us share our hearts with you!

For us, starting a family has always been a dream. As a gay couple, we’ve always known our path to parenthood would be a bit different, and we’ve wholeheartedly chosen adoption. We believe so strongly that there are already amazing children in the world waiting for a forever home, and we feel it is our calling to provide that. We are beyond excited to welcome your child into our family and give them a life full of security and unconditional love.

We met in the fall of 2014 while we were both studying at UC Berkeley. At the time, Michael was working on an undergraduate degree in linguistics and Aidan was starting a PhD in environmental engineering. Because our fields were so different, we spent hours peppering each other with questions about our respective fields and immediately connected over our shared curiosity about the world. That inquisitiveness has always been one of the key strengths of our relationship - it drives us to examine our feelings, behaviors, and even our beliefs - and it helps us constantly keep each other on our toes. In addition, we share core values of empathy, loyalty, integrity, honesty, family time, fairness, forgiveness, respect for others (especially elders), and questioning authority, which makes our relationship strong and helps it endure in the face of challenges.

Hi there, I'm Michael! I'm a California boy through and through, I've only ever lived here! I was born in LA, went to school there, and then ended up going to community college in Santa Monica. I transferred to UC Berkeley where I met Aidan, and since then, we have lived in the Bay Area. I think I'm a clear product of my parents. My mom and I are both photographers, and I have fond memories of going out photographing together in LA. My dad is a lawyer and a musician who loves to cook. To this day, when he and I hang out, we are always in the kitchen cooking up something interesting. My mom is originally from South Africa, and I grew up traveling back with her to visit our family, which is a big part of why I love to travel today. Family is really important to me. I talk to my parents almost every day and stay closely connected with the grandparents I have as well. I even call Aidan's parents pretty regularly, they're like my bonus parents. It's for these reasons (and more) that I'm so excited to have a baby.

Michael is the most caring, gentle, curious, and understanding person I know. Although those qualities haven't always been assets - for example, his sensitivity made him a target for bullying when he was younger, and he has a tendency to play therapist for our friends and family - they also make him the ideal future father. With these qualities, he instantly connects with children, sharing their curiosity about new things and matching their excitement. In a recent trip we took to Asia, Michael made quick friends with an 11 year old seated next to us during a train ride who was curious about Michael's camera. Despite the language barrier, they were laughing together and cracking inside jokes by the end of the 2-hour journey. Since early in our relationship, I've known how excited Michael is to one day be a father and I can't wait to see him in that role.

I know that he will be a wonderful teacher and friend, and will spend many happy hours continuing to learn and grow with our child.

Hi, I'm Aidan! I grew up in New Hampshire, where my family has lived since the 1600s, and I strongly identify with my New England heritage. I've always loved how each season in NH brings new pleasures: enjoying lobster rolls and ice cream at the beach in the summer, an apple cider donut at a pumpkin patch in the fall, and getting cozy in front of the fire while it snows in winter. Because I was raised in a rural area, I grew up spending a lot of time in nature. Picking wild blueberries while hiking is among my favorite past-times.

Through the experiences of my youth, I developed a strong connection with the environment that inspired me to do my PhD in environmental engineering and pursue a career in pollution prevention. As an engineer working for the state of California, I now implement regulations for wastewater treatment plants in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this role, I use my scientific background to protect the environment from human activities. This is a deeply fulfilling career for me that pairs my values with my intellectual strengths.

Aidan is the sweetest, most interesting person I've ever met. He's quiet and shy, but really smart. His sense of humor is unique, which means over the 12 years of our relationship, we have more inside jokes than I can keep track of. We even have our own secret language, basically. It's hard to explain. He and I have been through a lot together, and we have strengthened our relationship so deeply that when we're apart, it hurts. There are few things that bring me as much joy in life as when Aidan plays piano. He never warns me, I think because he's shy about it, but it will happen suddenly - the sound of the piano will vibrate our house. I usually stop what I'm doing to just close my eyes and picture him at his piano, because I know that if I go watch him, he'll stop.

Aidan also has a curious but adorable love of pears. Pear food, pear motifs, pear smells. That means every time we go out, it's like a treasure hunt. We never know if we'll find something pear related, but we know that if we do, we must buy it.

We love to travel! We both grew up going on cherished family vacations - for Michael to South Africa with his mom and grandfather, and for Aidan to Nova Scotia and Ireland with his family. It's one of the first things that we connected about early in our relationship. Some favorite destinations include: New England in the fall to enjoy the foliage and Halloween festivities, Sweden and the Nordics, and Southeast Asia.

We love to collect things from the places we visit that are meaningful and remind us of the people we interacted with, such as a pair of indigo dyed jackets we got in a rural village in Vietnam. Michael also collects flags from all the places we have been. We have always planned to make travel a part of our family life, and we can't wait to share our love of visiting new places and learning about diverse cultures with your child.

We also love to cook and try new foods. We have an amazing grocery store near us that has the most unique ingredients. Sometimes we go just to discover interesting ingredients to cook with. Michael has a binder full of unique sauce packets that we have collected throughout our travels. At times, we have picked our travel destinations based on foods we are excited to try.

That said, health and wellness are very important to Aidan, and he enjoys hiking, running, and playing tennis.

If we're not traveling, we're either at home with our sweet angel cat Torple, hanging out at a cemetery, out in nature around our house, or hanging out with our neighbor's kids.

Our house is in the Oakland Hills where we have access to great forested parks with endless hiking trails and a stunning view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Our neighborhood, Montclair, has a commercial area with delicious Indian food and pizza, and a great farmer's market that we go to every Sunday. Just down the hill from our house is Thornhill Elementary School, one of the highest rated primary schools in the Bay Area, and where we plan to have our child go. We love decorating our house for the seasons. Our favorite part of our house is the coffee bar that Michael set up in our dining room so that he can play barista when we have friends over. This really lets us connect over our shared love for coffee. One of our favorite things to do on the weekend is just sit in our little "cafe" with Torple and drink coffee together. Having themed parties and entertaining friends has always been a favorite past-time of ours, and we can't wait to extend that to throwing parties for our child and their friends.

Aidan's parents live in NH along with most of his extended family. He has one sibling, an older sister, who lives in Maine with her husband. He has close relationships with his immediate family. We travel to NH often to visit and love hosting them in our home in California. Every year, we spend the winter holidays in NH at Aidan's parents' house. His parents are super excited to be grandparents. As retirees, they look forward to visiting us in California often to help raise our new child. Aidan's sister and her husband are also planning on starting a family soon and will be a crucial (albeit, cross-country!) support system as we raise kids at the same time.

Michael's parents are divorced, but maintain a great relationship. They both live with their respective partners in Los Angeles, where Michael grew up. He's very close to both of his parents and speaks to them daily. Most of Michael's extended family live in Los Angeles or San Diego. Aidan and Michael also travel to Los Angeles and/or San Diego a few times per year to visit. Michael's parents are excited to be grandparents, especially his mother, who is retired and is excited to come to Oakland for extended visits each year to help support us with raising our new child.

We look forward to building a family with a foundation of curiosity, trust, respect,
and love. We are aligned on a desire to adopt a parenting style that combines warmth, responsiveness, and emotional support with clear structure and boundaries. We believe that this type of style is best for children by fostering confidence, responsibility, and stability. We will always strive to set clear boundaries, but explain "why", and we believe that children should always be treated with respect through positive reinforcement, open communication, and fair consequences that are rational and clearly communicated, rather than being just for punishment's sake.

We hope to maintain an open adoption in which the birth parent (you!) are invited to be as involved in your child's upbringing as you desire. We intend to be very open with our child about where they came from and how adoption works, and value your involvement at whatever level feels right to you.

We are so thankful to you for taking the time to read through our profile and get to know us. We hope that our story and our desire to create a family resonates with you. We love kids, and are so excited to bring one into our lives. If you choose us as the adoptive parents for your child, we commit to giving them all the love and support we can to ensure they get the best start in life possible.