2026 and Beyond

One year and 5 months later, and I’m long overdue for an update.

So much has happened in the past year. We took some epic trips (Japan, India, Romania, Portugal) all of which sit in my draft folder unfinished. A year ago, I could not have predicted how the rest of 2025 would unfold for our family. Instead of hibernating for the winter, and wrapping up our tour in Moldova we found ourselves temporarily moving back to San Francisco for family leave.

In March of 2025- 3 days before a trip to visit family in India- we received a long awaited email that we had matched with a child in India. Now those of you that know us, know that we have been in the process of adoption for several years. We went through the home study, education requirements, background checks, psychological and medical evaluations all with the knowledge that we would go on a lengthy list of “waiting families” and hopefully 4 years later receive a call. We were 3 years into our 4 year wait, so this email stopped us in our tracks. I woke up to a text message from our U.S. based adoption agency: There is a child assigned to your family, please check your email.

When I opened the email and saw a stoic (and slightly irritated) babygirl propped up in a red and white tool gown glaring at the camera, my heart dropped.

By mere fate, we were headed to India in 3 days! After consulting with our agency, we were given the ok to visit her. We had to re-arrange our India trip entirely. Dropped off our son with his uncle and aunt in New Delhi, and headed to her state (about 1.5 hours from Delhi). We spent the day holding her, talking with her caregivers, learning about her personality and daily schedule. The hardest part in this entire process, was leaving her in India to return home and finish up the legal requirements of an adoption. A process that would take 5 more months.

The cascade of events after this were quick, emotional, heart breaking in the best possible kind of way, and utterly chaotic.

In August of 2025, we packed up our belongings, flew from Moldova to India and picked up our daughter :)

I spent the next 9 months on parental leave. We moved back into our home in San Francisco, and settled in as a family of 4. Fast forward to present day, and my parental leave is now up. So we have packed things up in SF, and are headed back to Moldova to finish out our tour. This means three more months in Moldova (an Eastern European summer is dreamy, and SO looking forward to it). Come fall, we are off to our next post- India !! 🇮🇳

So this is the gist of where we have been, and what we have been up to. There’s specifics about the adoption that I will keep close, out of respect for my daughter and her autonomy- it is not my place to tell her personal story on the internet. We are back in Moldova, with whiplash from the past 8 months, but nonetheless thriving in the chaos. ❤️