What Can I Say?

What do you say to the people who send you baby pictures of your beautiful daughter? How do you express thanks for eight more small glimpses into her life before you came along? There are no words I can think of right now. And the pictures. Oh, my heart. I just look at that sweet sad face and I wish I could just go and tell her "hey sweetie, it's ok - it will all work out alright, give me two months and I will come and get you." And I feel so blessed right now too. Compared to other adoptive families, we have so many pictures of Maggie. These eight from Love Without Boundaries, twelve from her referral, and another fifteen or so that were taken at the orphanage during late 2006. But still, thirty-some pictures to sum up two years of life? A friend asked how we deal with all the small tragedies and my honest answer is we don't deal in tragedy. We celebrate all the small victories, like eight more pictures of our precious little girl. Thank you LWB.

So, where did these pictures come from?

I mentioned Love Without Boundaries in our Christmas letter. I wrote about all the good work they did for Maggie's orphanage. But what you didn't hear then (because I only found out recently myself) is that they provided foster care for her during the winter of 2006-2007 just before we went to pick her up.
In December, I had sent them an inquiry regarding the work they had done at her orphanage in the summer of 2006, with a "hey, if my kid is in the background of any of those pictures, can you let me know?" And they reply with, "we have foster care reports and pictures of your daughter." What?
So, we have been waiting, and trying to be patient and then today, Connie from LWB sent me the pictures you can see in the gallery here. (there's also a link under "Galleries" over there on the left) And then the tears started, because I do that a lot lately. And then, I share them with you. I will update later with info from the foster reports. It is mostly just a brief glimpse into her daily schedule and what she likes to eat. Surprise! Noodles are on the list!

Time to go for now. I need to go hug my kid.

p.s. Some of the pics are labeled "Maya" because LWB gives the kids in their program English names.