Eighteen-month-old Gary toddled into the room oblivious to the dramatic turn his life was about to take.

A strange couple met him at the door and handed him a new toy - a Winnie the Pooh doll - which he grabbed before taking off to explore every nook and cranny of this strange, big room.

Tony and Tammy McGaughy followed his every move - helping him climb on and off chairs, crawl under tables and make all kinds of discoveries, all the time wondering if their long wait was finally over.

After a couple of hours, the exhausted little guy and his Pooh doll finally crawled into Tony's lap and drifted off to sleep.

And Tony knew.

"Right then and there it was like, 'My gosh,'" Tony says. "It's a feeling that you can't describe. There's that bond and connection there that is so strong - and you wouldn't think it could happen with a child that's not yours."

Tony and Tammy were in love.

They had finally found their son.

It took the St. Joseph couple a long time to arrive at that day in 1999. They had endured a decade worth of quiet Christmases, empty toy bins and silent hallways.

They waited patiently to have a baby - a day that never came. But instead of starting the pill popping and hormone injections of infertility treatments, the couple turned to adoption. After all, for them having children wasn't so much a matter of biology. They just wanted to build a family.

Their search led them to Missouri's foster-to-adopt program.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there are 129,000 children waiting for adoptive families in the U.S. foster care system. Tony and Tammy wanted to do what they could to give a few of them a home.

"There's so much involved and so much you have to do, it's scary," Tammy says. "I think that's why we went the DSS path, because there was that training. We could go to some classes and find out some more information, which we're glad we did. That helped. We felt like we had some additional knowledge going into it. Little did we know it still didn't scratch the surface of what you need."

Just because they had made the decision to adopt it didn't mean their journey was over. In fact, they were just getting started. Adopting through the Department of Social Services itself is pretty straightforward. You fill out some paperwork, attend 39 hours of training and have a thorough background check.

It's what comes next that is often the tough part.

"Not every family that comes to us really can deal with the abuse and neglect the children have suffered," says Department of Social Services 5th circuit adoption specialist Martha Brookshier. "Most of these children do know their biological parents, so there is that factor in regards to the children and their feelings about their biological families, because most of them are visiting their parents until parental rights are terminated."

DSS does its best to educate families about the challenges their children will face, but sometimes all the preparation in the world still isn't enough.

"You think that the children are going to love you and appreciate you and automatically want to be a part of your family," she says. "But most of these children were a part of another family. They have memories of their birth family, so they may or may not appreciate having a permanent family initially. They may feel being adopted by another family is betraying their biological family."

Even if they're open to the idea of adoption, the road isn't easy. DSS does its best to match the needs of the child with the families who are looking to adopt. Their goal is to find a family for a child - not a child for a family. It's a subtle difference, but one officials say is what's best for the child. They're looking for the perfect fit.

The McGaughys must have fit just right, because not long after they first met Gary, they were approved to be his foster-parents ... one step closer to being his mom and dad.

For the next nine months, the couple took Gary to Kansas City for weekly visits with his biological father, all the while waiting for his parental rights to be terminated.

With each visit, Tony and Tammy watched helplessly as little Gary tried to process it all. With each visit, he would become more and more agitated to the point of wailing uncontrollably on the return trip.

And there wasn't a thing Tony or Tammy could do to help him, except hold and comfort him.

"I still remember vividly a day something happened and we just couldn't make it to his visitation," Tony says. "Instead of trying to reschedule it, they said, 'No, we've got to do this.' A lady came up from Johnson County to take him, and it broke my heart to see him screaming and crying and taken away."

"He thought he was getting taken away forever," Tammy adds quietly.

"At that point I said if I have to quit my job or whatever, I wasn't going to let that happen again," Tony remembers. "Those are the things that helped us bond. Just seeing the struggles that he was going through, just trying to bond and fit in and realizing it would have been very easy for him to say, 'I'm not bonding with anybody.'"

Finally, on the couple's 10th anniversary, they got the news they had been waiting a decade to hear.

Gary would soon become their son.

Ten years later, this family of four is complete. Eleven-year-old Gary and his 8-year-old sister, Marissa, sit quietly at the dining room table, working on homework and art projects. It's the story of two siblings, really. The brother's and sister's stories couldn't be any more different. As difficult as Gary's adoption was, Marissa's was completely smooth.

"One day we got a call from Martha and she said 'I have a baby girl for you, can we bring her over?'" Tammy remembers. "It was like, 'Wait!' This was in May right after we had gone through everything with Gary's adoption in December. And the first thing I asked was, "'Is she free and clear? Have her parental rights been terminated?' She said, 'Her mom signed her off before she left the hospital, but they haven't had a chance to talk to the dad yet.' We thought, 'We can't do that again. We can't drag him through all of that again,' so we told her when she was ready for adoption to let us know. We'd love to have her."

Three weeks later, the couple brought the newborn home.

The couple now uses those two different experiences to help other prospective parents understand the joys and trials involved in adopting through the foster-care system. They often are asked to speak to prospective families at DSS' foster-care classes and occasionally get calls from people who have a lot of questions and need some answers.

"The other night there were some grandparents that are trying to adopt their grandkids. I talked with him an hour or better on the phone and it was more of a commiserating. I don't know that I really helped him, but he said, 'Thank you. It's good to know someone else understands what we're going through.' We don't want to discourage anybody - we want to paint a picture of reality."

And the reality is that while there are struggles in adopting through any means, the rewards are worth it.

"I don't want to say you appreciate it more, but I guess it's more that you say, 'What a true gift,'" Tony says. "You end up bonding on a level that is hard to explain. They are our children - he is my son. He's not physically from us, but he's our son, and you can just tell that there is that bonding, that attachment. Until you do it, you would think, 'How can that ever happen?' But it just happens."

Despite the headaches and heartaches in Gary's story, the couple says it's still something they would repeat in a heartbeat. After all, without enduring the process, they wouldn't have their son. Or their daughter.

"As we've gone through to these trainings, we usually get the question, 'Would you do it again.' And I say, 'In a heartbeat,'" Tony says. "Even knowing what we've had to go through, we'd still go through it. It is well worth it. I guess it was one of those things that from my perspective we were going into it looking for our child, but came out of it realizing it's for them; realizing that's what we accomplished, something for them. They've become part of our home. I think that everyone has that selfishness thinking, 'We want children.' But then again, they want and need us more."

Adoption resources

AdoptUSKids.org | An organization working to recruit and connect foster and adoptive families with children waiting throughout the U.S. The Web site includes a national photo listing of children waiting to be adopted and information on foster care and adoption.

AdoptEx.org | The Adoption Exchange recruits families for kids who are waiting in foster care, supports adoptive families through the adoption process and trains child welfare professionals. Includes a photo gallery of children waiting to find forever families.

DaveThomasFoundation.org | Through its Wendy's Wonderful Kids program, the Dave Thomas Foundation combines the fundraising of Wendy's and its customers, aggressive grants management of the foundation and the talent of experienced adoption professionals throughout the U.S. and Canada to move children from foster care into permanent, loving adoptive homes.

NACAC.org | The North American Council on Adoptable Children works to meet the needs of waiting children and the families who adopt them.