When asked to write something up for the WIC program, I tried really hard to come up with something – but it sounded forced and dry, and then I remembered that I had written a blog post on our family website that was honest and heartfelt and really conveyed Maggie’s story – if a little long. So, here it is, our story of finding love on the internet and jumping from the China program to the WIC program to get it.

This is the story of waiting for Maggie. We looked everywhere for this sweet girl. Then, magically, one day – there she was, and she took our breath away.

I won’t bore you again with all the background information. Most of you have heard it before. I do want to add, that the entire time we were chasing all of that paperwork, I was looking for Maggie. I’d log onto the CHSFS website and scroll through the pictures of the waiting kids and I’d ask myself “Is that Maggie? Could this little one be our Maggie?”, but every time I knew deep in my heard that no, that’s not our Maggie. Until one Friday afternoon in mid-July I was on the website again, scrolling down, looking at all the cute little faces…and then, oh! I found her! I found our Maggie!

Bryan was at his brother’s that evening; my sister was gone for the weekend, so I went to visit my Mom. The entire time I was there, I was thinking of this precious girl I had seen on the internet. Although I knew I shouldn’t, because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, I told my Mom and showed her Maggie’s picture on the website. “I think this is her Mom. I think this is our Maggie”. I went home that night and printed out her picture and information, and carried her around in my purse until Sunday. Bryan had spent all day Saturday with his brother again, and I’m carrying around a baby picture in my purse that he knows nothing about! So – it’s Sunday afternoon. By now I’ve told Mom about her and shown her picture to my sister. I pull her picture out of my purse and hand it to Bryan. “I think I found our daughter”. Stunned silence. Then, “Wha..? How? Start over?” I told him the entire story, starting from “You know how I’m always online looking at babies?” and ending with “I know we can do this, babe. We have to do this, look at her, she’s our Maggie.”

We talked about her medical history. We looked up “sacrococcygeal teratoma” on the internet. We looked at her chances of having another teratoma grow (very small). We talked about her age (we thought Maggie would be a baby not a toddler!). We talked about the “terrible two’s” and what we could expect. We talked about how I just knew, stronger than I’ve known anything in my life that this little girl was meant to be a part of our family.

All of that sureness, all of that belief in destiny was dashed on Monday morning when I called Lisa at CHSFS and found out another family was looking at her file. “We’ve had a lot of interest in that little cutie,” she said. “I could take down your name and phone number and call you if her file becomes available.” I agreed and hung up the phone, devastated. I was heartbroken and beating myself up for not calling on Friday. We had lost our Maggie. How could this have happened? I’d fallen in love with this little girl and now she’s going to join a different family? I called Bryan to tell him the news, the whole time with a mantra in the back of my head “you should have called on Friday, you should have called on Friday…” Was I wrong? Maybe she wasn’t Maggie.  Maybe I just wanted, no needed, her to be Maggie so bad, that I had invented that sureness. Would we ever find her? “You should have called on Friday, you should have called on Friday” shut up, shut up, shut up! Oh, Maggie what did we do?

The next morning, the phone rang around 10:00 am. “Hi! This is Kelly from Children’s Home Society, I got your number from Lisa. Let me tell you about this little girl…” I was so stunned, I couldn’t comprehend a word she was saying. Kelly’s talking and I’m thinking, “No, you don’t understand, we lost her, I should have called on Friday.” And Kelly’s talking away, “Xiao Mao... birthday is February 16^th…Anhui Province…” and that’s when it finally hits me “Oh my God, she’s ours. She’s telling me that Maggie is ours!” And Kelly’s saying “Would you like to review her file? I can email it to you.” And I’m saying, “Of course! Yes! Yes! Yes! Send it over!” I call Bryan immediately, and I’m bawling so hard I can barely speak. He’s immediately concerned as I struggle to say “No, no, it’s good. The tears are good. She’s ours. Maggie is ours.”

To wrap it up, we submitted more paperwork, moved our file from the regular China program to the WIC program and received the okay from CCAA to proceed about 6 weeks later. Our final approval came sometime late in the year, and we were on an airplane to China 6 months after first seeing her sweet face on the internet.

She is a happy, healthy, sweet little girl that has brought so much joy into our lives. She’s cranky, opinionated and defiant sometimes too, and we think she’s perfect. And for all that waiting for “Maggie” that we did, she prefers her Chinese name - Mao Mao. As for her health, she’s got a decent size scar and she’ll need periodic visits to a neurosurgeon to see if the teratoma comes back, and if it does, she’ll have surgery to have it removed again. “Not a big deal”, is what we say around here. We are truly blessed and feel that we can handle anything that comes our way.