From the mouths of babes

My favorite story is when we were in Florida for our adoption trip. We're both white, & we took our 3-day-old black daughter, who was already pretty dark, to a grocery store. The cashier, who was a girl in her late teens, stared at Nicole in her carrier & then at my belly (I'm a size 0 or 1 & was wearing a tank top & jean shorts) & her moth dropped open & she said, "You're in really good shape for someone who just had a baby!" I don't remember my exact words but it was something like, "Can't you tell she's adopted?" She said she couldn't, that maybe she had a "skin condition" that made her dark. I told one of my black friends about it & she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. My daughter's 2 now, so I'm sure I'll have stories like yours pretty soon.

My AA/CC (brown skinned) AS found out the other day that our very very white friend John was adopted. He said, "No way! John's parents are black?" I said "No, his birth parents were white. Two white parents give birth to white babies." It ended up being even funnier because as he explained further, he wasn't assuming that John's bio parents were black, he was assuming that since John is white, his adoptive parents must be the opposite color of him and therefor black. I told him I would have to write down the conversation because I was sure he would get a kick out of it someday. Gotta love kid logic.

Those are really cute stories! You reminded me of another conversation with my kids that took place in the car. I had my then 3 YO daughter, Julia, who is white, my biracial 4 YO son, Thomas, and my black son, Joseph, who was just a few months old. Thomas asked why we said he was biracial but Joseph was black, when they both had brown skin. I explained that it was because his birth father was black, but his birth mother was white, where both of Joseph's birth parents were black. He thought a minute and said, "Oh, so that means I'm a Dalmation, because I am black and white!". Then, Julia, who had been sitting quietly, said, "I'm, green!". It wasn't the first time I had explained that to Thomas, but apparently the first time he really understood what it meant. Our neighbors down the street had just gotten a Dalmation puppy, which was why he thought of that.Jen, your story reminded me of another I heard, from a woman I met at an adoption conference, regarding the assumptions kids tend to make that things are the same everywhere as in their lives, and what adoption means. This mom was having dinner one night with her family, including her in-laws. Her adopted daughter, who was about seven, asked, "Mom, are you and dad lesbians?". She said that it made her real nervous because of her in-laws being there and she just said, "No, we're not, Dear." After dinner, she asked her daughter about it and learned that there had been a new girl in her daughter's class at school that day. The girl introduced her self and said that she was adopted and her parents were lesbians. The little girl thought the term "lesbians" might mean parents who had adopted kids!I guess it isn't surprising that little kids should have a little trouble understanding what it all means, when adoptive families are so diversified, these days!

Those are great stories!

I remember when my older FS (AA/CC) was a baby and my young brother in law (6 or 7 years old and CC) was watching me change his diaper. He had never seen me change the baby before and when I took his dirty diaper off, my BIL says to me "oh, he's brown everywhere!" I guess he didn't realize that he would be the same color over his entire body. I had to laugh.

When we got home with our biracial ds, our five-year-old dd said to her cousins, "He's a little white and a little black and he's ALL my brother."

These are cracking me up! Okay, this story is not about transracial adoption (although it DID come from a friend's son who was adopted internationally.) He's been told his adoption story many times, always including about how they flew to Guatamala to pick him up. When he was around 4, he rode with him mom to the airport to pick up a friend. When her friend got off the plane, her son became upset. "where's her baby?" He thought that whenever somone flew on a plane, they got a baby!

We are CC, DS6 is biracial (AA/Filipino) and DS4 is AA. DS4 told me that his a kid from preschool, Manyok, is black. He is from Africa, and is very dark indeed. He described himself as "brown," which is accurate. DS6 has described his brother as brown (lots of agreement there), but says that he himself is "dark white!" Although on 1/4 Filipino he looks very Asian, and his skin tone is no darker than his Latino and Chinese friends. I'm so glad we bought a house in a racially-diverse neighborhood. The boys go to school with kids who are CC, African, Latino, AA, Polynesian, and Chinese, and biracial AA/CC. I love DS6's "dark white" description. LOL

"Dark white" is one I will remember! I guess that is what my granddaughter is. She is a quarter AA and the rest cc. She has sandy blond hair so people always think she is just white but wonder how she keeps such a great tan all winter!