Welcome! Meet:

Esteban + Melissa

Professor / Editor

Florida

Caucasian

Catholic

All About Esteban & Melissa
Why Adoption?
Gallery
Family and Home
How We Met
Advice to Future Child
Perspectives on Open Adoption
Favorites

All About Esteban & Melissa

We are Melissa, Esteban, and little Diego. We are easy-going, laugh often, and entertain each other with silly songs and nicknames. We are a multi-cultural family: Esteban is Argentine-American, Melissa is from California, and sweet Diego is from Florida with Puerto Rican roots. Being a bilingual family is important to us, and we look forward to celebrating all of the cultures that are a part of this family, including those of our children's birth families. We also love to travel, especially to explore nature and to visit family, and envision many adventures together with our children.

We are both blessed with wonderful jobs in education and will seek to foster a lifetime love of learning in our children. Just as our families encouraged us to work hard to follow our dreams, we hope to also empower our children to pursue their passions, hobbies, and talents. Plus, Esteban's job would fully cover college tuition for our children, so they will always have that option!

We hope to raise children who are kind, generous, open-minded, and curious about the world and the people in it. We view our marriage and family as something sacred, and are dedicated to maintaining a strong, healthy relationship. We will always aim to provide a warm, stable, and happy home for our kids to feel safe and loved in!

Why Adoption?

For years we have known that adoption would shape our family, we even discussed it before we were married. Adoption has always been our first choice for growing our family, and becoming parents through adoption has been such an incredibly humbling honor. We can't wait to see how strangers will be brought together again to form another beautiful relationship.

We believe that love makes a family, and we hope that through this profile you will be able to see just how much love we have for each other, for our families, for our son, and for our future child. We would love an open, on-going relationship with our child's birth mother, and desire that such openness will help our child to grow up confident in the love that fills their adoption story and will give comfort and peace to the strong woman that chooses us as her child's parents.

Family & Home

Our bright, airy home is lovely, and we have worked hard to make it a warm and welcoming space to share. The home is a spacious four-bedroom with a large, grassy yard in a quiet, safe, suburban neighborhood just down the street from a cute park.

We enjoy having folks over and have hosted a number of holiday gatherings, church groups, book clubs, and birthday parties. We have a great set of diverse friends nearby who we can count on for anything. Our community has surrounded us with so much love, support, and prayers!

As much as we like having a full house, our home is also a relaxing place for games, movies, cooking together, reading, and spending time in the yard. Melissa loves to garden with Diego, and Esteban is a skilled asador (grill master) who has nearly perfected the art of grilling. We love being together, and our home is cozy and fun for staying in with our sweet kitties, Harry and Vincent.

We are very close to our parents and siblings and love them so much! Our families are warm, fun, and caring, and we are blessed that we all get along well. Melissa's family lives on the West Coast, and Esteban's parents and sister live near Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Despite the distance, we see each other several times a year and often talk by phone or video chat. Both sets of grandparents have been married for over thirty years and were beyond thrilled to welcome our son. They are looking forward to meeting a new grandchild.

They are so excited by the idea of a new baby in the family. Our siblings and their spouses are all wonderful people. Family is very important to us, and we are blessed to have such beautiful people in our lives.

How others describe me

Esteban is so smart and kind and just the best dad and husband. Diego and I always love to be with him, and he makes it so clear every day that we are his top priorities. Loyal and devoted, he is a family man through and through. He can be silly and fun and has a great laugh. He is also such a hard-worker. He is beloved by all his students and truly loves his job. He is also a brilliant cook and treats us to the best dinners nearly every night. He is supportive, patient, and gentle, and I’m so thankful to get to share my life with such a wonderful man!

Melissa is sweet and caring and such a fantastic mother. She is smart and hard-working. She has such a love of nature and taught me how to appreciate plants and the environment. She is funny and likes to be silly and has the most beautiful smile. She also sings beautifully and is great at doing all the character voices when she reads to Diego. She helps me grow in my faith and makes me a better man every day.

How We Met

We met in Chicago in 2009. We were moving into neighboring apartments and kept passing each other in the hall with our boxes. Always the gentleman, Esteban kindly helped Melissa carry her things, and we discovered we had both moved from far away to start graduate school. We quickly became each other's first friend in a new city and got to know each other over board games and home-cooked meals. Our friendship blossomed into love, and we were married in California in 2013, surrounded by family and friends. We moved to Miami after we finished our degrees and soon started the adoption process. In 2019 we were chosen by Diego's wonderful birthmom and became parents! It has been our greatest joy and honor to grow our family through adoption, and we are excited to see our son become a big brother to someone special!

Advice to Future Child

We hope you stay curious and open-minded as you learn about the beauty and pain of the world. We hope you find kindness and compassion for others who are different than you, and kindness and compassion for yourself and any struggles you face. May you have the courage to try to do big and little things! Know that it is okay to fail and that we will always always love you and have your back. We believe in you! Follow your passions and your gifts. Give back and don’t burn yourself out. Spend time in nature and love big.

Perspectives on Open Adoption

We are so thankful to have an ongoing relationship with our son’s birth mother. We include her in our prayers with Diego every night, and special photos of her are on his wall above his bed. We have many books about adoption (for us as parents, to do our best for him, and for him as an adoptee) and we tell him his story often.

We want you to be comfortable and happy with the level of openness in the relationship. We look forward to sending photos, updates, and hopefully visits if you would like. It will always be our goal to raise the child with an understanding of the deep love their birth mother has for them. We will always respect your enormous sacrifice and selflessness in our words and actions. We do not see openness as a threat to our parenting or family and the importance of biology does not disappear because of an adoption. The way we see it, the more love the better!

Favorites

Esteban

Favorite Movie: Cinema Paradiso
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: I love our Christmas Eve tradition of cooking food from another country/culture. We spend days planning the recipes and go to local markets to really try to get to know the culture a bit more. We all cook together and have a long meal as a family. It is beautiful.
Hobbies/Interests: American football and soccer, cooking, grilling, traveling
Dream Vacation: East Asian Adventure
If I Could Choose a Superpower: flight

Melissa

Favorite Movie: Star Wars: A New Hope
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: For Christmas Eve, we pick. different culture and cook a big dinner of their traditional foods. We love learning about a different country or people group each year, and the food is always so delicious.
Hobbies/Interests: gardening, disc golf, pottery, reading, exploring
Dream Vacation: a whole family trip to Costa Rica
If I Could Choose a Superpower: teleportation