School nurse Matt Galantowicz is having a perfect day.
“My kids came to visit me at work,” Galantowicz tells TODAY.com, his voice oozing with pride. “They came running in yelling, ‘Daddy!’”
Being a parent still feels surreal.
Galantowicz, 49, his husband, Keith, 47, spent years trying to adopt a child. There were countless rejections for seemingly no reason. They would get their hopes up about a match only to be ghosted. It’s a process that Galantowicz describes as heartbreaking.
“We’d do it all over again,” he says. “Every day Keith and I look at each other and we’re like, ‘Can you believe where we are? Can you believe it’s happening?’”
In July, the couple will adopt not one, but five siblings: Jordan, 10, Madalynn, 8, Sky, 7, Keanu, 6, and Alvina, 4. The children, who were born in Texas and raised in foster care, have been living with the Galantowiczs in Buffalo, New York, since October 2023.
The Galantowiczs didn’t think twice about opening their home to five kids.
“I’m Italian, Keith is Polish, we come from these huge families. We are used to it,” Galantowiczs explains. “And on top of that, my mother was like, ‘I think I’m going to move in with you guys for a year to help out.'”
“When Keith and I were growing up, society told us that we’d never married or have a family. And then to see these dreams come to fruition. It makes me emotional,” Galantowicz says. “All of my dreams have come true. Now I want their dreams to come true.”
“We talk a lot about the future. I want them to know that anything is possible,” he continues. “These are kids who were living with food insecurity, educational insecurity, housing insecurity. It was hard for them to see past their immediate needs. Now they’re looking forward to things like going to the beach and upcoming birthdays.”
Galantowicz recalls going through boxes shipped from Texas that were packed with broken toys and stained clothing.
“That was all they had,” he says, softly.
In Buffalo, each child has a room of their own with a theme that fits their personality (think Pokemon for Keanu and mermaids for Maddy). The siblings also have plenty of new clothes thanks to the generosity of their community. The Galantowiczs set up a GoFundMe to help with education expenses and extracurriculars.
“It’s all sinking in for them — this is where they’re going to grow roots. This is where they’re going to celebrate birthdays and milestones,” Galantowicz says. “The friends they make at school are the friends they’ll have for a lifetime.”
Jordan, the oldest, who took on the mother role with her brother and sisters when they were in foster care, is starting to behave like a typical 10 year old.
“In the beginning, if one of the kids was crying, she’d run over to them and go into mother mode. It was almost instinctual,” Galantowicz says. “Keith and I tell her, ‘It’s not your responsibility anymore.’”
Galantowicz’s Instagram grid is filled with joyful videos and pictures. There’s a clip of the kids giggling as they dye Easter eggs for the first time with their grandmother, and another that shows them goofing around under blanket forts.
“We get about two dozen pieces of artwork a day,” Galantowicz says. “This morning when I woke up, my daughter brought me something she’d written overnight about how much she loves us and the cats!”
The Galantowiczs hope more people will consider adopting older children and sibling sets.
“It wasn’t a struggle for us to become a family. Even our friends are kind of amazed at how everything fell into place,” Galantowicz says. “We have the highs and lows — but the lows are the things we expected — you know, stuff that comes along with having kids.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Keith and I are the luckiest people on the planet.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com