We have been together for about 16 years now, and married for 6.5 of those. Both of us take relationships and commitment very seriously, and recognized similar values in each other that have led to us still being in love with each other all these years later. We both share certain characteristics that we respect and admire about each other - Commitment, Loyalty, and Perseverance.

What makes us a great team is what we have learned from each other. Anjali brought patience and self reflection to the marriage, which she taught through actions rather than words. Tarun has brought with him the desire to learn and an open mind, which has allowed us to grow together as a couple and remain respectful of each other's point of view.

We admire and respect these values in each other independently, but what what we love is that we both use these unique values to make each other happy in our relationship. We bring our individual strengths together to progress ourselves as a unit rather than each individually.

As the children of Indian immigrants who came here without any other family and with only an education to their names, our young lives were unquestionably filled with adversity. Through these hardships, both of us learned early on that loyalty to family is the single most important asset in life, and we were taught this by our strong-willed and courageous parents.

The second fundamental lesson we learned was taught to us by the obstacles we faced as we built our own lives alongside our families - that hard work and determination are the key to success. Our lives together with our fur children have taught us the third fundamental lesson now - that happiness is the most important goal, which cannot be replaced by wealth, life-less objects, or status. These are the values we carry with us as we move into the next chapter of our life to provide a good life for our child, and we vow to make this our foremost goal in his/her upbringing - to make him/her happy and content.

Since we are both physicians, the natural assumption would be that extensive education is going to be a requirement that we will have for our children. However, our long training has taught us an important fact - not every child thrives from formal education. Keeping this in mind, our approach to educating our child will be to play to his/her strengths. We will try to extrapolate which areas our child excels in, and will help him/her develop those skills. We will not impose a certain education path for the child - but, given what his/her needs and lifestyle requirements are, will guide him/her to choose a profession that will ensure his/her financial happiness.

That being said, we will like to teach the child about finances so that they can understand how to be independent. We never want necessity to get in the way of interest, and we believe that financial independence is the way to ensure this. As such, regardless of our child's desires and needs, we will help him/her design a financial framework that is personally tailored to his/her own goals in life. That being said, we will supplement whatever education the child desires so that s/he does not have to endure student debt. If that means the child would like to be a doctor or a lawyer, we would subsidize all of his/her graduate school.

We each have an older sister and Anjali has a younger brother; we have 2 nieces and 2 nephews. All of our parents and siblings are within a few hours drive and we are basically in the middle. Both of our best friends are also a few hours drive away. All in all, our family is close enough that they will be very much a part of our child's life.

We each get our own holiday - Thanksgiving with Anjali's family, Christmas with Tarun's. A unique aspect of this arrangement is that we arrange for dinner for those less fortunate than us during thanksgiving, and for presents for those less fortunate than us during Christmas.

It is hard to describe how thrilled our families will be to welcome our child. We will allow him/her to create some of his/her own traditions to build upon the ones we have already established.

When our families get together, we generally create at least one lasting memory together. A recent example is when our nieces came to visit us, and we did an "escape room" theme. We went through 5 escape rooms together and solved each one! One of our nieces is a mini Tarun and after each escape room, the two of them dressed up in suits (she wore one of Tarun's) and we went out to dinner at different restaurants.

We live in a dynamic, multicultural, family-friendly community with nearby parks, lots of walking trails, and a community center with a pool and multiple resources. There are several fun events year-round, an example of which was a recent Humane Society-sponsored "bark in the park," where several dog parents from around the area came and we all enjoyed watching our puppies enjoy treats and meeting new friends.

We currently own a 4 bedroom, 4 bath townhome in which our favorite room is a fourth floor loft that is attached to an outdoor rooftop deck with a cozy two-way fireplace. This is also where our dogs' room and their toys are, and part of the loft area is a movie-themed lounging area with a large TV and comfy couch for movie nights.

In addition to our own network of friends who have kids that will be our child's age, our neighborhood is young and there are plenty of new friends for our child to meet. It is also a very safe and suburban neighborhood with excellent and diverse schools.

Dear New Friend:

We are Tarun and Anjali, and we are so excited to be parents! We have been together since 2010 (when we were 27 years old), and got married in 2019, so we understand and cherish commitment to family.

We both have always wanted to be parents. However, as doctors, we have seen a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and as such, decided early on that we wanted to be parents to children who may otherwise not have a family. For this reason, we have never tried, nor will we try, to have biological children.

The only other children we do have, are our fur babies, whose names are Saaya and Augustus (but he goes by Gus). We love these two unconditionally, and feel like we were meant to be their parents. Before going to pick them up, Anjali had initially only seen Gus's profile online, but when we got there, Saaya looked up at Tarun with her blue eyes, and Tarun was smitten. Bringing both Saaya and Gus home that day was one of the best decisions of our lives.

The path was not easy, though - early on, Saaya had several health issues and spent a couple of nights in the ICU. It was difficult until we finally got a diagnosis, which was that she had not properly weaned feeding from her mother. We spent the first month taking turns waking up in the middle of the night and feeding her with a bottle like a baby to help her build up some weight. Now, we are happy to say, both of them are happy and healthy, and love each other so much. We often contemplate that perhaps that is why we brought them both home that day - to give Gus a loving sister and to give Saaya the support she needed.

I mention this to demonstrate how important family and commitment are to us. We believe that together, we can overcome any obstacle, and we would love to instill this same value in our children. Tarun's mother says something that has stuck with us through difficult times - "in the end, everything is okay. If it's not okay - it's not the end." This has taught us the profound message of never giving up on what is important to us - and the most important thing to us is family.

On the topic of family, as children of first generation Indian immigrants, we had amazing parents and siblings, but unfortunately, we were not able to grow up with any extended family. For our children, however, we are blessed to have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and dear family friends waiting to love them and support them, in addition to our unconditional love and support.

This is why we would love for you to be part of the child's life as family, and would love to build whatever relationship you feel comfortable with. We will of course send you letters and pictures detailing milestones or just fun moments with the child, but we would be delighted if you could be a part of the child's life. The more love and support we can give our child, the more the child will thrive.

So we ask you to start on this journey with us and bless us with the honor of being parents to a wonderful child. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

Respectfully,

Tarun & Anjali