Adogtion or What happens when you eat too much chocolate or vanilla ice cream

Last week I celebrated Mother's Day at Emma and Ben's school. I joined all the other mommies for a cup of tea and a mini concert, where Ben played his very own air guitar.

One of the little girls asked me why I was there and Emma piped up that it's Mother's Day and I'm her mom (like, duh!). To which the little girl replied that there's no way this was possible as Emma's brown and I'm white.

As an adult, an overly sensitive one, and a mom, I immediately got my Friday broeks in a knot, and for the rest of the day stewed and mulled over what this meant, how did Emma interpret it, had she been effected and affected by it, and most importantly, how was I going to manage it at home?

Together the headmistress and I discussed that Emma would be able to do a little talk on how she came to be our daughter at her birthday ring the following week. Slowly slowly I introduced the idea and she seemed interested, but also wanted to know why she needed to do it. 

I explained that some people, young and old, wanted to know more about adoption, and that we would be in a good position to help them understand it a little better. To which Emma asked what the word 'adoption' means. I said it means that you sometimes have two mommies, one that carried you in her tummy, and another mommy who wanted you so bad, you lived in her heart and then together. 

Ben said 'adogtion' was when Chloe (our Jack Russell) was your mommy.

At that moment Emma thought it was a good idea and so we decided we would work on a few sentences over the weekend. On the Monday (the birthday ring was on Tuesday) I reminded her that she was going to chat to her friends about adoption but she didn't want to. I said that that wasn't a problem at all but didn't she think her classmates would like to know about our special family? I also asked (again) if she remembered why her and Ben were brown and Mark and I were white and with a roll of the eyes, and a divaesque sigh, she said "we're brown because we eat too much chocolate ice cream. You and dad eat too much vanilla!"

So, quite simply, this is what differentiates white and brown people. A love of different flavoured ice creams.