Good Hair

This may be one of the cutest hair do's ever! (the first picture does it NO justice!) AT camp they had a braider and although I didnt have AJ's hair done there, I noticed something interesting. She put beads at the base of the cornrow.... so I HAD to try it! It was super cute on the girls at camp and SUPER cute on my little A! I changed up the parting pattern a bit to do something different and really like how it all flows. I did realize about half way through that I should have done 4 beads per braid to line everything up better but otherwise its cute and keeps the braids a little tiny bit looser so as not to pull on the scalp either!Aerial view...
LOVE!

Camp, the final chapter!

Just a few notes on things at camp this year....

Amazing wonderful speakers.... WAY better than last year, very pertinent, insightful, an just plain awesome!

Lisa Marie Rollins who is a black adult adoptee and an amazing writer, actor, playwrite. She is in the final stages of developing a one woman show on her life story being a transracial adoptee. She did the play for us and is was so inspiring. She shared her story though her play, addressed racial issues, and faced adversity. Here is a link to her blog http://birthproject.wordpress.com

The other speaker was John Raible, a biracial adult adoptee and adoptive father. He has been featured on numerous TV shows etc throughout his life. He discussed racism issues, how to handle them, and most importantly what is important in raising a transracial adoptee. He discussed things like living in diverse areas, ensuring your child is not the only black child around, making sure there are black people in your life, ensuring you are giving them the skills that they will need to face racism alone etc. He was also the one who led us through the activity that I talked about before with the people sculpting exercise.... that was just amazing! Here is his blog as well http://johnraible.wordpress.com/

They both were just very honest and did not sugar coat anything. We need to be aware that when parenting black kids, there are things that we need to be very aware of, things that need to be addressed, things that we need to have in place in our lives, and things we need our children to know.

The biggest downfall to camp is the lack of black role models in the kids room but otherwise is a pretty good camp. We had a good time, there was a ton of stuff to keep us busy and we will definitely go again next year. One thing I realized is how lucky we are to have many other adoptive families who look like us in our circle of friends and in our community and that our community is fairly diverse (not diverse enough for my liking but much more diverse than most).

Umoja in Pics

Here is the big group who was at camp this year. Many families have been coming every year but there were a few new faces this year! This being our second year, we still don't know everyones names but there are a lot of familiar faces.Addy, Joyanna, and James big sister (I'm blanking on her name:(
Addy and Joyanna played together a lot last year and picked up right where they had left off!

Lots of silly faces this year!
And a few good smiles as well!
Isabel is another friend from last year, she grew up a lot this past year!
There was a band that came, they were GREAT! The kids did a conga line and little A got in on the action!
Addy took well to JoJo last year and recognized her immediately when we got there! She was very excited to see her again.
Miss Ella Grace and Addy spent quite a bit of time together this year! They both have baby brothers about the same age as well so next year the boys can hang out together too. Her mom and I talked all about hair!
Had to get a mommy and Addy picture!Trying to corral all the kids for the group photo... not an easy task!
Snugling at the camp fire!
Well I gotta get to bed but I promise I will write about the amazing presenters that we had for the adults!

Weekend updates and things I wish I would have said...

My next post in the next day or two will include a bunch of fun pics of Addy and I at Heritage Camp. We had a good time, the speakers were AWESOME! I'll go into that in my next post as well. We got to spend time with some families from last year, meet some new families, and learn more about transracial parenting.

There were a few things however that are still on my mind, things I wish I would have said, things I wish I could change. And since I didn't say them and this is my outlet, you get to read them so click out if you don't want to read on!

There were a few comments by adoptive parents that just rubbed me the wrong way... and not just me a few of the other families brought it up to me to see what I thought as well. And some of you may not get it or may not appreciate my thoughts on the subject and thats just fine as well. I'm not here to judge other peoples parenting but to reflect on my own and try to make sense of it all.

So example 1: We watched a video about 6 grown adult adoptees who were adopted transracially and their thoughts, examples, issues, etc from growing up in white families, many of which had zero other non-white people in their lives. We had about 2 minutes after the video to just briefly share our feelings/thoughts on the video. One member of our table spent the two minutes telling us how, "they need to understand that everyone gets teased over something like if you have glasses and get called 4 eyes or have braces and how its the same thing"....ugh, after he finished it was already time to reconvene and discuss things as a big group so none of us had a chance to nicely share our views on how it is different (camp is supposed to be a safe place to share your feelings, learn etc, so obviously a response needs to be appropriately worded)... I'm pretty sure though that most people would agree that racism is completely different from being called 4 eyes. My question then is how do you help these parents realize the difference in a respectful manner when they probably won't get it anyway and their black children need them to get it. One of the things discussed was how you need to acknowledge the racism that your child brings to you and not dismiss it as "its not that bad" and not to attempt to brush it off by saying things like the previously mentioned conversation. So maybe my question then is how do you help the kids who are having race issues and don't have the same level of support. Obviously I am white and am no where near an expert in racism or responding to it but if you've read some of my posts where I've shared some of our issues, I at least am fully aware of its existence. We see it every day even though some may be passive, its always there and how you respond will affect your kids self awareness and self worth.

2-We had a soul food brunch the last day. One of the kids asked their parent what kind of food it was, "black people food" is the response from the mom. No explanation, significance, discussion, background etc. I didn't witness this one first hand but another mom who sat with us asked us if we thought that was an appropriate response or not. One simple response. For some reason these single line responses bother me but probably because I am someone who wants details. Dont tell me to make a project to make a project but tell me the significance. We had ginger beer the last day.... What is it? Why is it significant? Who drinks it? Why? The deeper meaning is what I am interested in not just that Ginger Beer has something to do with Kwanzaa or Africa or something... I still need to google it!

3-We did an AMAZING exercise with mirroring, sculpting people, etc (sounds weird but it was super cool) and the last one was a group sculpture of the perfect relinquishment scene. It was amazing, painful, and emotional all at the same time. During the discussion, one parent made a comment that I thought was very judgmental toward a birthmom, a birthmom that could represent any birth mom. I believe it was out of pain and anger that they made this comment but it saddened me as I have the utter most respect for the painful decision our birth moms made and although ours have different stories than the one shared, I would hate for people to pass such judgement on our birthmoms. The comment was also very much about adoptive parent entitlement to a baby which I completely disagree with. We are not entitled to any baby, ever, regardless of the situation. Birthmoms can change their minds, can choose another family, can choose to parent. And really, I would much rather a birth mom choose to parent than to place a baby and regret it her whole life. We were very well aware that any birth mom who chose us or any baby who came home with us may not be the one that we parent and although painful, we knew that it was the birth moms best interest that needed to come first. Anyway, I couldnt see who had made the comment, and I'm hoping that it was a recent issue and that they were just still hurting. I know that every bump in our adoption road is what led us to the two kids and two birth moms that we have now and I cannot imagine anything else.

So enough of my soapbox....I just feel a sense of responsibility to all of these kids. Being black and raised in a white family is not easy, and its not always going to be an easy road to navigate but I feel like we are doing everything that we can to be as prepared as we can be and to have supportive black role models in our childrens life. It's the path we chose and we need to remember that we chose this, our kids didn't. We need to support them in our family unit as best we can and ensure our lives are as diverse as possible.

Tomorrows post: The fun and pictures from camp!

A visit from Aunt Robyn!

Almost two weeks ago I did a new parting pattern on AJ's braids and Love it! They have held up SUPER good and I didn't even use my typical products! So after swimming tomorrow night she'll be getting a new style but here is a pic of the horizontal braids that then were braided into two big cornrows!

We have been pretty busy around here! A couple of weekends ago, Meena came and helped us make a chalkboard wall in our kitchen! Supergirl helped. The kids have had a chance to draw all over it now and just love it! Next step is to get some chalk holders!Aunt Robyn was in town on her way to move to Texas so we got to spend some time with her. Since we only see her about once a year we thought we should grab some pics of her and the kiddos at one of my favorite pic places!

We spent some time at the park and had some fun with chalk! We figured since it was nice out and typically it is cold that we should enjoy the nice weather before the snow covers our ground!

Saw this on PINTREST and since both kids are being superhero's knew that we HAD to do this! I haven't edited the pics yet but they are still SUPER cute!
One of the other Adoptive moms arranged for a big photoshoot of the adoptive kids in town at the orchard so we headed over there and actually got a few good pics of the kids together. AJ and JT never seem to be on the same page when we are taking pics but that day they were!Addy had found some lady bugs and loved holding them and watching them walk on her arms...
Until about 5 minutes later when I said, "hey look at your shoulder" and she saw one, freaked out, and wisped it off her shoulder (look about halfway down her arm and you can see the orange blurr).She climbed the hay bails and looked just super sweet!Here is one of the group shots!
One of my favorites, the cutest little leggys in the world!
And the girls holding hands and skipping off into the sunset (well actually the pumpkin patch!)!
JT enjoyed the hayride the most. He LoveS tractors!
Figured since I had the camera out that I should have my sister take a pic of me and the kids. I never seem to remember to do that and I need more family pics!
JT has this super soft airplane blanket that he loves. My friend Amanda got it from TJ Max so of course when he finally attached to it they didnt have anymore and the brand was nowhere to be found on the internet...until now! An ad popped up when I was online and it looked a lot like his blankey so I clicked on it.... a big fluffy Comforter!!! Seriously! So I HAD to order it! His room is airplanes and knew it would be perfect for when we got a big boy bed for him. The reviews said that the colors bled when washed so I washed it right away with a color grabber and it did great! Before washing it I pulled it out of the package and there was squeals of pure delight, hugging, snuggling, wrapping himself in what appeared to be a giant replica of his precious blankey! He LOVES it! And being the slightly OCD person I am, I wanted to save it for his big boy bed. Well that seemed a bit mean so I ordered a matching 5ft blanket so that he can have the blanket now and the comforter later! Here he is reveling in his amazing comforter!
All week Addy kept asking when we were going to do face paint! I had gotten some halloween make up for Halloween and had told her maybe we could do a trial run of her super girl face painting. So tonight we painted their faces. Ty's is a little askew since he wont sit nice for very long.
And then we let them paint our faces! Addy did Robyns and JT did mine! Both kids had a GREAT time!
And so tonight, Miss Robyn will start her long drive to Texas to start her next adventure!