Evalie Anaïs' Baptism

We finally got ourselves together and Baptized Evalie this weekend. Unlike with Arielle, we knew we would do it but we were just really slow to get to it. A few years ago, we Baptized Arie at the age of 2 1/2 which was strange but because we were not sure as parents what religion we would teach and how to go about it. We are now both pretty sure we will try to expose the kids to both ( as opposed to non, which was our original strategy) and hope they benefit from the ideals that religion can instill in a child but remain open to either or even to select a religion that fits their beliefs when they are older. The Catholic church does require its members to maintain "membership" by keeping up with ones Sacraments and Baptism is the first of them. Evalie did very well was very cranky really because the ceremony was at 11:30 which is her nap time. She cried and squeals throughout and screamed when the Priest poured water over her head. She batted his hand out of the way each time he tried to bless her and basically was not letting him (or anyone) near her. So I suppose in hindsight, doing this with a much older child is easier. Anyway, our families gathered and we celebrated with good food, treats and a beautiful cake made by my favorite patisserie (she's made cakes for us since Arielle's first birthday.

The ceremony was quick and some people were late and missed the entire thing but I was fine with it. When it was our turn to come to the basin, we all gathered and my sister held Evalie over it. Arielle was just tall enough to see over the rim and she stood there watching cautiously to see her sister get baptized. It was actually really cute to see how worried she looked when Evalie started screaming from being startled by the water streaming down her face. Once that was done, we sat down and my brother did the candle lighting and brought it over to Evalie, she starred at it and then tried to grab it. He gave her the box and she started eating that!...By the end, at 12:30 she was so hungry and tired I had to immediately feed her to calm her down and by the time we got home ( 5 minuted away, she was sleeping so I put her to bed.

The day before, I had taken off from work so I could shop and do some little things around the house to prepare. I cooked some food, made cupcakes and favors, Austin and Arie cleaned the house and we were ready to have a great party. I really liked the idea of a white dessert table so I set that up basically with a centerpiece of spray painted branches. The cake, cupcakes and favors were also on that table along with white chocolate covered pretzels, almonds, cream puffs, Sfogliatelle and powdered donuts. 

We had some antipasto platters, chicken wings, sushi platter, chips and dip, dried fruit etc for appetizers while everyone settled in.  

Modern Family// Christmas and Chanukah

Being the "modern family" that we are..(thats my attempt to be funny), we decided that this year it was time to embrace the goodness and really try to educate the kids about the differences between myself and my husband (besides the obvious..I'm Catholic and he's Jewish) and try to get them excited about them. So last week, he bought a Menorah, candles and started the first night of Chanukah off with some Potato Latkes and a prayer. Arielle was very interested and asked a lot of questions about it, coincidentally, we had been to a rather large Bar Mitzvah the weekend before so she had just been surrounded with hundreds of friends and family to celebrate her second cousin ( who was our ringbearer..)becoming a man!

Anyway, I was pleased with her level of dedication (and that of her dad) and very satisfied anytime the man cooks something..thats tasty. 

Anyway, we had our tree up early in December and as Christmas fast approaches, its filled with lovely wrapped silver presents delivered directly from the North Pole by the Elf who lives on our shelf and a lot of other places these days. I decided to jump on the elf bandwagon because I knew if I hadn't I would revert to just letting sleeping dogs lie and what fun is Christmas without a littlle anticipation, some terror over this elf watching your every move and some discipline on the side. So all in all, we're good with our modern traditions this year!

"I don't like brown.."

First meeting between Arielle and Evalie: Evalie was a few hours old.

I felt a sense of panic as my daughter uttered these words the other night! I knew she did not mean it in the way she complains of anything I put on her that isn't pink and frilly, I was sure this time she meant color..brown skin color! It wasn't as straight forward as I make it sound, it was evening time, after dinner and we were getting ready to head to bed. I had been watching The Voice earlier on and off and just happened to put it back on when a brown skinned contestant named De'borah came on to sing (..quite well actually) and because Arielle never stops singing, I asked her what she thought about the girl singing..her response, "I don't like her, I don't like brown". I was a bit taken aback, I wondered what she meant, the girl wasn't wearing brown and what did brown have to do with her singing anyway? So I pressed her to explain what she meant by this, she wasn't really into the conversation so I reminded her gently that I was brown and so was her grandma and in fact she was brown ( at least 1/2) too..she asked "Is daddy brown?" I said "No, he's not". So, as I rattled off people who were "brown" that are part of her family, she eventually said, "I love you because you're my mommy and I love everyone in my family". So I quickly texts my older sister who also has two mixed race daughters and asked if she had had to deal with this in the past? She suggested to ask her more specifically if anything had happened which made her feel like she didn't like "brown" people.

The next morning, while getting ready for school, I asked her about what she had said the night before and she didn't really seem bothered by it. She just insisted that she didn't like "brown" not because of anything..her teachers name is Ms. Brown but she's not, she has one brown skinned girl in her class who she says she doesn't play with, so basically the only "brown" people she interacts with are myself and my family. I'm not sure what else to do, I've addressed it but I'm not sure I was able to clearly articulate that all people should be treated equally regardless of their color and how do you even convey that to a four year old?. And more importantly, I am really conflicted because I feel bad..slightly offended, I deal with this everyday, when I am out alone with Evalie, people often remark "that's a really cute baby" they assume she isn't' mine because she looks completely Caucasian maybe except for her curly black hair, when Arielle is with me and calls me mommy people are a bit less surprised because she's a bit darker and has long, extremely thick curly hair. 

Once again, I'm faced with trying to identify and explain her place in a world of black and white as a mixed race, mixed religion child. I know she thinks she is white and Catholic but she isn't and I have to find a way to make her proud and confident that she is both because its going to be more and more relevant as she grows up, while her religious affiliation may be less so. Any thoughts?

Jews and Gentiles..?

Its a complicated little life we've created here for our children, everything we do as parents and as individuals have effects both large and small on our children. The manner in which we speak and the things we say to them and others might teach them tolerance, patience, kindness..the way we treat our environment might teach them about responsibility and longevity, the way we feel about ourselves when we look in the mirror might teach them about confidence and acceptance.  We all imagine our children's lives in the most positive light, we go to great lengths to protect them from things that might hurt them or taint their innocence but sometimes even that is not enough to shield them from the pressures of life.

Since I wasn't born in this country and spent a fair amount of my life living in my home country before moving to the US,  in some ways my attitude towards issues of race and religion aren't in line with some of the philosophical debates or always in the forefront of my thinking or even clearly defined, I try not to see people by the color of their skin but realize that there are a lot of very strong opinions and stereotypes built into the social structure of this country so I realize I am often seen by others as a color, whether that color is black, brown, chocolate or considered to positive or negative. Certainly, it makes things easy for me to wake up every morning and walk out into the world expecting to treated with fairness and respect but this isn't always the case, so how do we prepare our children to face this almost inevitable form of prejudgement? I thought a lot about this before getting married to a "white Jew from brooklyn"(with all its grand connotations..") and felt it wasn't enough of a reason to now go out and make an effort to find a man who was considered a 'match' for my color, religion, upbringing, social class etc. Again, when my daughter was born and had to decide if she would be exposed to Catholicism, Judaism or nothing, we decided to just go with nothing, we didn't Baptize her until last summer and she was almost three. 

I have recently begun thinking about these issues of race and religion again when she asked me one night if the baby was going to be "my color or her and her daddy's color.." and I had no good answer to this, I just laughed and said we would find out when she was born, but this indicated two things to me, firstly she now sees me as different than her daddy and she identifies with his 'color'. I asked her what color I was, to which she responded "brown" and her dad "white" and herself.."white" and then her cousin (pictured above).."black"! So that completely went out the window.

Th next scenario was a few nights ago when she chose a book to read before bed and it happened to be the children's bible she received as a gift at her Baptism! She asked my husband who is a non practicing Jew and is very skeptical of all religions to read it her. He went along with it until she asked him who 'God' was because he was the only character not shown in any of the illustrations on the pages, he hesitated and provided no answer because he has no belief in this but also didn't want to say that to her. After she asked a few more times he pointed to a giraffe and she was satisfied.

This past weekend, we celebrated both Passover (Seder with her great grandmother) and Easter (egg hunt at home) and although she didn't really acknowledge what the meaning of the days were she eventually will and if anything, she will inevitably chose and  identify with one tradition or the other right?
As a parent, I feel like I must be prepared to tackle these questions with confidence and in detail because at almost 4 years old, her questions are getting quite sophisticated and she senses a lot from being around us as well, I would hate for her to learn intolerance as a result of our carelessness but also she needs to be able to identify herself within the context of recognized races in the US which is technically defined as 'mixed race' or 'bi-racial'. We all know how complicated this can be, in almost 4 years, the race and citizenship of our own president is still in question, you'd be surprised how many people think he's black (technically, the first African- American president of the US) and non-american till this day (he's actually mixed-race born in Honolulu, Hawaii) but why does he never get referred to as white (his mother was properly white, from Kansas)?

I had heard of a project by another blogger called The Mixed Race Project which quotes that according to the 2010 census, more than 9 million Americans identified themselves as multi racial-a jump of 32% in 10 years. I wasn't sure why I was drawn to being featured on it but now I realize that at least its a small step towards placing us, our family, within a group of others who also struggle to define themselves and be defined.