Different

Our family is different. Although the kids look like dad a bit (he has a darker completion and dark hair), they look nothing like me. I am very Scandinavian looking, and they are Hispanic. Today at the swimming pool, another Hispanic little girl about 5 years old asked me where my children were. I pointed the kids out, and then she asked, "What does the dad look like?" It doesn't really bother me, but it bothers my daughter. She draws our family with brown skin and black hair - except for me. I am pink with yellow hair. She has lamented, "I wish I had hair like yours" and "Can I pretend I was in your tummy?" I don't mind these things, but I hope that I am also teaching her to embrace her heritage and not to worry about how people look.  A few weeks ago, she came home and said her friend at school was teaching her Spanish because "her family speaks Spanish...and they all have the same hair color." My husband and I are both fluent in Spanish, so that is not anything too new for the kiddos. It was that last part of the sentence that breaks my heart knowing that she is uncomfortable because she feels different than other families. I hope she never feels less than others because she is adopted, Hispanic, a female, or part of an interracial family.

Because of this, I am learning to be more aware of things. For example, it is nearly impossible to get a personalized book (where your kids get to be in the story) with a protagonist who has dark hair and eyes. In Barbie, the Hispanic doll is the mean one, and there are some other minor "not blonde" characters. Tinkerbell and her fairy friends at least have a bit more diversity, and they seem to be more equally important than in other shows. Disney Princesses are a challenge as well. This week we watched Pocahontas and my kids thought they finally found someone that looked like them! It is about time for a Disney major motion picture musical featuring a Hispanic female lead!

But I digress. This post isn't about how poorly minorities are represented in today's culture. It is about helping my daughter to accept that our family is different, but that doesn't mean we are less.

The Minority

My husband and I spend a lot of time on a college campus because of his job. We see lots of minorities.  My kids also attend head start and the elementary school in town that has the most diversity in it. It kind of skews our view of our community. Sometimes, however, we see very clearly that my kids are in the 5% of the community that is not white. Our daughter goes to dance class in a nearby community that is made up almost exclusively of Mennonites. My daughter is literally the only child with brown hair - no joke. They are all blondes except for the one redhead. I wonder if any of the kids notice. I wonder if any of the parents notice. I wonder if anyone else wonders. Today my boys started soccer - that is a little bit better. At least 2 or 3 kids on each team are minorities, so my kiddos only stand out because they are tiny, not because of their race. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the kids' head start classes are filled with lots of ethnicities - in fact, my daughter has only one white child in her class. Interesting, isn't it?

Finalized!

We started the foster care and adoption process in January of 2011. We found our forever on May 22, 2012, and the finalization took place on July 5, 2013. Seems like forever and yet just yesterday that this all began. What a journey!

We arrived at the finalization after a LONG morning. We had checked out of the hotel, daddy got a haircut, we stopped for lunch at Chick Fil A (where there was an e coli breakout so we couldn't have fountain drinks or ice), and we had played at a playground. We were hot, dirty, and happy :)

I went into the building first to try to figure out the room number and so on. I didn't make it past security - apparently you can't have tweezers or nail files. When I got back outside, the kids' worker was there, so we all went in together with her. We had a few friends join us as well as the kids' foster family. It was kind of a zoo while we waited with all six kiddos before going into the courtroom, but everyone settled in when we entered the courtroom.

It was the judges first week on the job, so we were only his second finalization. The GAL stood up and said something like, "This family won us over when they told us that they knew this kids were theirs when they saw them online. They just needed to figure out how to get them. We all had tears in our eyes, and this is the happiest adoption we have ever been a part of." Well, that started it off with some tears, but once the formal stuff began, it moved right along. Little Bitty sat on Dad, raised his right hand, and also agreed to adopt all three kiddos. Lol. My daughter sat on my lap and took it all in, and my big boy corrected the judge when he mispronounced our last name. I also had to stop the judge when he referred to my little two as twins. It was a little bit different than I had imagined. Afterwards the judge gave each kid a bear, and we took some pictures. Then we happily drove off to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. It was a great day!