First off, my apologies that it has been so long since our last post! It’s been quite a year. Izzy has grown quite a bit. She is now 5’1″ tall and over 100 pounds! She passed her mom in height this year and loves that fact! She started middle school in September and has kept up really good grades, even making high honors. At school she was active in the middle school production of Willy Wonka, plays the violin, and has joined several clubs. She has a great friend group of kids her age that she has met through her various activities. Izzy has a great sense of humor that is often on display. She got really into music in 2024. She is an Olivia Rodrigo super fan but she HATES Taylor Swift lol. She went to her first concert in April when she saw Olivia Rodrigo at MSG. Soccer is still a big part of her life as she plays on a travel team and plays throughout the year in leagues and tournaments. She LOVES animals and got two new guinea pigs for Christmas (Chester and Chestnut- or “The Chets” as she calls them).

This year hasn’t been without it’s difficulties. Along with middle school comes a lot of social challenges which can be a bit tricky to navigate. Additionally she lost her grandfather in April, who had been a daily part of her life for almost eleven years. She has had a really tough time with the connected grieving. Fortunately Isabella has a great support system in place, including a therapist who she very much likes working with. That network of support has helped her through some of those tough times this year.

More than anything else we are proud of the person she is. She is thoughtful, caring, empathetic, and a good friend to her peers. She is reflective on situations that give her difficulty and puts in a lot of work to overcome challenges. The world could use more people like her!

Hoping all is well with her birth family! I promise we will be better with updates this year.

Our apologies that it’s been almost a full year since we updated. We hope that you are all well. Isabella’s life is extremely full which has kept us all busy this year! A bit of an update…

Izzy, as she likes to be called, turned ten this summer and she has been growing very quickly. At her pediatrician visit last month they measured her and she is now 4’9″ and 90 pounds! She has grown 5 inches in the last year and 9 inches over two years. She is just about reaching Dana’s height which she takes great joy in!

Her school life is quite full. She is almost midway through 5th grade where she is performing really well academically. We had parent-teacher conferences with her teacher last week and each of her teachers raved about her and how well she is doing! She is a member of her school’s student council, the 5th grade chorus, and the select chorus as well. She has also joined the coding club and STEM clubs at school as she has a real interest in many science and technology related topics.

Outside of school she is just as busy. She has continued to play travel soccer for her team, the Ravens, where she mostly plays left defense, though has occasionally plays goalie as well. In the spring her team had an undefeated season, finished in first place, and they won medals which they were all really proud of. They had a rough fall season as they were moved up two divisions. This winter she will be playing futsal (indoor soccer) to help her keep her skills between the fall and spring seasons. She has really grown to enjoy the game and, more importantly, has made really close friendships with the girls she plays with.

In addition to soccer, Izzy has gotten really into theater which she started with a camp this summer at our local community theater and then continued with weekly lessons this fall. She had a good part in a rendition of Alice in Wonderland and is looking forward to continuing theater this spring. This fall she finally gave up dance, after many years, but decided she wanted to try karate, which she has come to really enjoy as well. Izzy has continued to take piano lessons and has gotten really good at it. This spring she will be participating in NYSSMA for piano, violin (she started playing that at school this fall), and voice.

Isabella continues to be such a warm and loving presence in the lives of everybody who know her and we regularly reflect on the amazing gift that you all blessed us with. She has asked about her birth parents more often recently and has loved hearing the story of the night she was born. We have reinforced to her that her adoption was one that was born out of only the deepest love for her and she has felt deeply grateful for that.

We hope this season finds you all well and we are wishing you the best in 2024. Finally, the post office where we had the PO Box has closed so I need to go get another one. If you have any plans to send anything reach out on here first and I can give you the new PO Box.

Happy New Year to you all! Hoping for good health and fulfillment in 2023 for each one of you. First off, the PO Box has been renewed and is the same address that it had been: PO Box 1004, Sound Beach, NY 11789

I apologize it took a little bit of time. We each got hit pretty badly with COVID in December and were then just trying to get through the holiday craziness. You are welcome to send things there at any time.

You should know that Isabella is very proud to be adopted. She’s told her friends about it and has told us that she feels lucky because she knows that she has two families that love her. That’s how we have always tried to frame it for her and will continue to going forward as she becomes more mature and curious… that her adoption was an act of love and one of the truest ones we have ever seen. Please know that we regularly think about how your family sacrificed so deeply out of love for our daughter and that we never take that for granted.

Below are a few pics from the holiday season. If it looks like she is getting really big, well, she is! She recently had her annual well visit at the doctor and she has grown 3 inches and gained 13 pounds over the past year!

First off, I am sorry it has been so long since our last update. Life has been quite full and I have been meaning to sit down and make this post for months now and, well, here we are!

Thank you Rachel for the beautiful letter you sent us last fall along with the pictures that you included. Let us know on here before you send anything else. I have to renew the PO Box and I wanna make sure that I do before anything gets sent.

lsabella (or “Izzy” as she likes to be called by her friends) is getting so big! She started 4th grade this fall and absolutely adores her teacher. Her life is quite full as she is involved in many activities. She started to play on a travel soccer team this fall, she takes several dance classes per week (Acro is her favorite), she takes a weekly piano lesson, and this fall she started to take Spanish as well. She is becoming a really well rounded kid and has what seems to be an ever growing group of friends. At home she is energetic, creative, thoughtful, and has a really great sense of humor. She loves to draw and create things. Last year she even won “Artist of the Month” at her school at one point… she was really proud of that! In soccer she typically plays defense but has also started playing goalie this year. She really enjoys being a part of a team and building friendships with the girls who she plays with.

We hope you enjoy the pictures and videos attached here. I promise I will be better about getting another update up here sooner!

So sorry for not posting sooner. We received your letters and gift for Isabella. What beautiful and thoughtful letters! Isabella LOVED the necklace! I am posting a picture here of her wearing it. Her exact words were, “It’s so beautiful!” She also really loves dolphins and animals in general so it was such a perfect gift!

We showed her the picture of the cat and she had a few thoughts. She said that if it’s a girl you should name it Mia, Emma, or Emily. If it’s a boy she liked the name Whiskers, Chester, and Harold. Chester and Harold are characters from her favorite book, Bunnicula.

A little note about how we handle adoption with her…

From day one we have told her that she is adopted. We have celebrated it as something that makes her “extra special” and she truly sees it as that way. She knows that being adopted means that she was born to someone else and not the two of us. Our general philosophy has been to always be truthful to her but to also be respectful of what she is emotionally ready to handle at different times. We feel that her questions will generally tell us when she is ready for new bits of information. We have friends and family who are adopted and we regularly talk to them about when is the right time for different types of information. Additionally we have spoken with therapists about the same, with the goal being that she will internalize her adoption as something that is overwhelmingly positive. At this point she has never asked specifically about who her birth family is. But just this summer she told us that she feels lucky because she has “two families… my parents and my birth parents”. We were so happy to hear that she has that positive perspective and we will always stress to her that her adoption is something that came about because she was loved so much and that it was truly an act of love.

We feel really fortunate to be able to keep in touch with you because we know that as she continues to grow and mature she will continue to be able to see adoption as a special experience that shows just how much she is loved. And know that we will always hold onto our adoptive experience as the most selfless act of love that we will ever know. We are so very blessed to be her parents and for the gift that you gave us eight years ago.

I am posting a picture of her below wearing the dolphin necklace. Additionally I am posting a few other recent pictures as well. I will try to update again in a couple of months. She is heading into a busy time… she started 3rd grade last week, she is taking five dance classes (ballet, lyrical, hip hop, acro, and jazz), she is returning to soccer after a couple years off, and this week she is taking her first piano lesson. She really has a life filled with all sorts of experiences. But above all she is thoughtful, creative, caring, funny, independent, and smart!

It sounds like the past year and a half has been really tough. The world has been really insane! Please know that you are never far from our minds and that we are sending love and positive thoughts to each of you! Stay safe and healthy!

First off, I apologize, it’s been too long since our last update. We are hopeful that you are all well. The world has certainly been crazy these past 15 months. Fortunately we all have our health and have been fortunate in how the pandemic has impacted us compared to others who have been harmed in so many different ways.

The past year and a half have been challenging for Isabella, though we are super proud of the way she has managed. As an only child it has been difficult for her to have much time to socialize with others kids as she was in school virtually until April and then has not been able to play with her friends outside of school very often. Still, she has made the best of it.

She is really doing well in school. She is a strong academic student, particularly in math, which is probably what she enjoys most. Her teachers have raved about how thoughtful and caring she is towards others which is probably what we are most proud of. She loves nothing more than to look for others who are struggling with things and offer a helping hand.

She has continued to take dance classes. This year she has taken tap, ballet, jazz, hip hop, lyrical, and her personal favorite, acro. This fall she will be returning to soccer as well, which she took the last year and a half off from. She swims in her grandparents pool nearly every day in the summer and that is probably her favorite thing to do. This summer we took a vacation to the DR and she loved getting to swim in all of the pools there.

I renewed the PO Box yesterday so should you have anything to send at any point, you can send it to PO Box 1004, Sound Beach, NY 11789.

Enjoy the pictures below. I will try to update a bit more again soon. Sending you all love and positive thoughts!

What an insane year 2020 has been so far! We hope you all have been healthy and are getting through 2020 as best as possible! Isabella got a new puppy named Princess which has helped keep her busy during the quarantine.

Rachel-

I am SO sorry that I am only now getting this address to you. In December, shortly after we got your message I ended up getting pneumonia really seriously and was pretty much out of commission for close to a month. After that it just completely slipped my mind until just recently. Please forgive me! Here is the address for anything that you may want to send to Isabella…

P.O. Box 1004

Sound Beach, NY 11789

Attaching a few pictures from the holiday season and also from last week when she lost her first tooth!

Sending our love to you all!

-Brian

Isabella continues to be the most amazing part of our lives and we comment regularly about how lucky we are to have her. She has such a wonderful personality… funny, curious, quirky, and independent. She has lots of interests and treats everyday as a new adventure.

At our parent-teacher conference her teachers told us that she is “perfect”! She is bright, is reading well, and is really kind to her classmates. She also loves math and seems to have a good mind for numbers.

Isabella loves to draw and play with her stuffed animals. She takes several of them with us no matter where we go. Her absolute favorite thing to do is to swim. This summer she swam in her grandparents pool nearly every day and this fall she tried out for and made a swim team. She goes for focused lessons on different swimming strokes every week. Additionally she continues to dance, taking lessons in ballet, tap, and jazz, and she just wrapped up another fall season of soccer.

Have a great holiday season!

1st Grade- School Picture

Daddy-Daughter Dance

Mommy’s birthday

Isabella is doing really wonderful. She loves kindergarten. One day this winter when she was sick she asked us to call her teachers and tell them not to teach anything new because she didn’t want to miss learning anything (LOL)! Her teachers love her too. At both her fall and spring parent-teacher conferences they raved about how smart she is and how much she contributes to their classroom.

This school year she has continued to take dance lessons and has her recital in June. She played soccer in the fall and is playing again in the spring. She loves to play goalie (and she is really good!). During the winter she took ice skating lessons one day a week and she is going to take them again at an indoor rink this summer. She also really just loves to hang out at home. She loves movies (Coco, Trolls, Smurfs, among many others). She is also really into creating all sorts of artistic projects and she loves practicing to read and write. We try really hard to expose her to a lot of different things so that she can find the things that she is going to become passionate about.

Bella has the absolute best personality! She is super funny and makes us laugh all the time. But she is really caring and generous as well. We are so incredibly proud of the person she is growing into. The gift you have given us becomes more remarkable by the day and we regularly think about the the way you have blessed us through your love and selflessness. We have told Isabella from Day 1 that she is adopted. She knows that this makes her “extra loved” and “extra special”. (We’ve even overheard her telling a friend, “Did you know I am extra special because I am adopted?” lol).

Sending love and warm thoughts your way and hoping your family is well!

Ready for the Islanders playoffs!

Ice skating lessons this winter.

Matching PJ’s with Mommy

Selfie with Daddy

She loves horchata!

At the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

Her first science fair project

Outside the Trolls Experience in NYC

Dressed up at the Trolls Experience

Easter