We met over ten years ago after chatting a bit on a dating website, and then deciding to go out. We are just like so many happy couples now, but at the time, it was a fairly new thing to meet this way. C.C. was actually working on a writing project and trying out dating sites as an experiment. Mark joined up on a whim, after a few close friends from out of town visited and suggested he try the free site, and maybe have some fun, and wasn’t taking it seriously. We met after work on a blustery winter night in the city in one of C.C.’s old neighborhood haunts when she was at grad school. It was warm, cozy, and from their first hug, they were both enamored with each other.

Neither of them had ever been so riveted by another person on a first date. They ended up ordering the same salad, (C.C. a Cobb Salad no bacon, Mark a Cobb Salad no avocado), and having such a fun conversation that they closed the restaurant, and had to be asked to leave.

It was a snowy night, and on the walk back to C.C.’s car, she realized that she had left her lights on, and ran to check that her car would start and she hadn’t run down the battery. The car started right up, the radio blasting into the quiet street, and as the snow fell around us, we had a quick celebratory kiss.

A night like that can only happen once. And it spun us both into the fun, messiness and confusion of love.

Since then, it has been the natural order of things. We moved in together, and lived with Mark’s sister Kim for a bit together which was a great help for us to save up to move out of the city and buy our own home.

We were very lucky with timing to buy our home right before the pandemic, so we had a really lovely place to hunker down when we were in lock down. It has been fun to hunt for furniture and art that would work in a refurbished farm house, and we have really settled in and made the house a home.

Now we are excited to start a family, and enjoy the love and life we have with a child. We hope you will help us make that dream happen!

Why We Are Adopting

We share a passion for care-giving, teaching, and mentoring, and would love to share that with a child. C.C. has been working with children and care-giving since her first job as a Children’s Library assistant in her small town at age 15. Once in high school, she happily started working with younger children who needed help with reading. As she was focusing on her higher education in Boston, she worked as a preschool teacher.

When pursuing her graduate studies abroad and in the US, she started work as a live-in nanny and freelance caregiver. She took care of two lovely children in Sweden for a year, and had the privilege of living with the family during that time. When she moved to New York to continue her graduate studies, she found her care-giving skills in great demand with the faculty.

She was immediately brought into a wonderful household as a nanny for a filmmaking family, and spent four years with them until they moved out of the city. Then, she was connected to their close family friends, and started as a nanny for a 6 year old spitfire and gem, Siena. She was lucky to be with Siena and her family as a family assistant, nanny and tutor until she moved in with Mark. Siena and her family are a part of our chosen family, and we are still close.

Mark is part of a large family, where he and his brother are adopted and his two older sisters are biological children to his parents. He has had the wonderful experience of being part of a loving, very inclusive family, and has had a very positive experience as an adoptee.

Because of that, adoption was always something that he knew he wanted to do as an adult. Mark’s family were very involved in fostering children when he was school aged and as a teen. He had the fun of being a caregiver to many of the foster children that came through their home on the way to adoption. He was changing diapers and dealing with teething babies like a champ.

After one of the foster children, Tiki, was adopted, Mark’s family stayed close to him, and they spent Thanksgiving with Tiki’s family every year. Mark and Tiki were always very close. Mark mentored Tiki, and Mark invited Tiki to live with us while figuring out his path in NYC. Now Tiki is married, living in Queens and works as an EMT for the New York Fire Department and is still close buds with Mark – they call themselves cousins.

Mark is also delighted by the energy, exuberance, and imagination of children, and gets to work with them all the time in his job on film sets for major commercials. He knows it’s going to be a good day when he is working with kids. The question from everyone on set is always, “You must be a Dad, right Mark?!” And he’s excited for the time that he can answer a big yes to that question.