Precious baby girl

We recently requested, and just yesterday received, Madeline's finding ad. For those of you who don't know about finding ads, I'll explain. When a little one is found without their parents, they are brought to the local police department before being handed over to the local orphanage for care. When the orphanage receives the child, they place an ad in the paper describing when and where the child was found in the hopes that their family will come to claim them. This is just really a formality because it is illegal in C*hina to "abandon" a child. Before we adopted Caleb, we were able to locate his finding ad. And now, we have been fortunate enough to receive Madeline's ad as well.

Madeline's ad is so special to us because it is actually the "headshot" of the oldest photo we already have of her. Since she is missing her left arm below her elbow, a close up photo of her arm was taken upon admission to the orphanage. We knew this photo was "older" when we first received her file to review, but we had no idea how old it was until very recently. The photo itself is time stamped "24 2:55pm." But just a few weeks ago, I looked at the EXIF data (info about the photo file stored when it is taken) and noticed it was 3.24.08. This is the date she was actually found...when she was approximately two weeks old. We requested to have her finding ad translated. And it notes that she was found with a flowered quilt. Well, in her finding ad photo is the very quilt in the "arm" photo we received long ago. So now we have a photo of the precious 2 week old face that has a been such a mystery. It is so amazing to piece these two photos together to come up with what our daughter looked like at 2 weeks old. We're simply amazed. Her finding ad also indicates that she was found with a note! I am really hoping to receive the original note or a copy of it from the orphanage when we travel to China to bring her home. I am now quite curious what her birthmom had to say. We can only imagine the anguish she experienced as she decided it was better for someone else to care for her daughter. But to know she had some parting words for her little girl makes me want to do all that I can to find out what they are.