Having raised a book-obsessed little boy (whose fondest wish was to be Alice in Wonderland and to wear a flower girl dress in a wedding and who never once cared about a car, truck or even train) followed by two brothers with transportation and construction love, mixed with other loves like art and food and soccer, I find myself now with this sweet toddler girl—and her baby dolls. Yesterday, when I put her and two of her doll friends into the crib at naptime, Saskia was sitting up and rubbing her babies’ backs and singing, Hushabye in a quiet, breathy, soothing voice.
For one thing, yes, indeed, she’s too darn cute. For another, as a Free to Be-era mother, the baby dolls in her crib—in fact all five, count ‘em, five baby dolls in the house—predated Saskia’s arrival. You see they’d been purchased for her three brothers. Not only are there numerous baby dolls, there are two Asian dolls—one of them male—and we did have a black baby doll, although now Blanket Cake lives at Saskia’s closest pal (imagine neighbor cousins) Arella’s house (inherent complexities noted, we are, I guess it would seem even with the dolls adoption friendly, and the doll was named by Arella not Saskia, who pretty much has two names for dolls: Baby Doll and Nico). With this rather large doll population, we could practically get a show on the Learning Channel.
True confession: the reason behind my purchase of the first—big, it turns out and, according to Saskia, heavy—beautiful Asian doll baby was my desire to adopt a Chinese girl. Until looking at the doll again today, I’d kind of forgotten how long I’d been harboring adoption fantasies (for the record, the pinnacle of my China adoption desire was when I was in the midst of reading—and sobbing through—Cindy Champenella’s wrenching book, The Waiting Child; I dare you to read it without becoming an absolute puddle). In the end, or the middle or wherever we’ve wound up, when adoption really did come into our lives, a couple of things became clear for us, including 1) if we were going to adopt, we felt a newborn would be better for us than an older child or even an older infant and 2) we really wanted an open adoption. Both of those considerations led us toward what feels like fate, which is to say the family constellation we have with the most adorable chirpy girl ever (and an extended family she brought with her).
I digress (although I have much more to say on all those topics mentioned in the previous paragraph).
The toy collection (read, store’s worth of toys) began with an earnest ambition for balance between “boy” toys and “girl” toys (otherwise known as toys). Besides baby doll, our first boy acquired a truck, a ball, some puzzles, some stuffed animals, some wooden blocks, a dollhouse and train tracks. Oh, and he had some small plastic animals and Wizard of Oz figures and Sesame Street character figures (although he never once saw Sesame Street; he never saw anything for that matter). The book-loving boy mostly “played” with his books, or, uh, “read” them for years before he could read. For this kid, books were—and remain—amongst his truest companions. The Asian baby doll did get some intensive attention during those first months of the little baby brother’s life (and this mama of two did nurse that baby on elder brother’s demand).
Over the years, with construction and trucks and knights and dragons, the collection veered significantly more “boy,” as in an army’s worth of Playmobil knights, plenty of Lego (sure, you’d hope that was a gender-neutral toy, yet not everyone seems to think so), a bunch of Mighty World construction characters, and a full fleet of vehicles (many already offloaded to a bunch of truck-loving kids between here and Boston). The dollhouse never got a whole lot of play (although the tree-house, a grandparent gift, got plenty and now houses a collection of Remy’s treasures). The first doll stroller, purchased for Remy, after he so loved his cousins’ doll stroller, fell apart and Saskia adores her doll stroller—and, as I’ve mentioned, suddenly her dolls too. Just so that you may not snicker at my sincere efforts toward all toys for all genders, I do want to offer that Saskia does like vehicles, she clutches the odd knight she can steal from the playroom (one of her first phrases was choke hazard) and she will play with pretty much anything her brothers offer her. She’s no shrinking violet. She’s yet to reveal herself as prim, proper or prissy (and while she is happy wearing blue and pink equally, she does very much enjoy shoes, most notably hand-me-downs from her pal, Amartya: orange clogs, shiny red boots or pink sparkly shoes).
I didn’t even buy her a birthday present, because between the gifts she received and the crazy bounty of three siblings’ worth of toys, there really wasn’t a particular thing I wanted or even felt compelled to buy her (I did make her cupcakes with pink frosting and a candy corn atop each one, just like the mouse Julius had in Keven Henkes’ wonderful book Julius’ Candy Corn). All that said, I do want—sometime soon—to get her a biracial baby doll to reflect her own identity.
Despite how relatively easy it is to find Caucasian baby dolls and Asian baby dolls and even African American baby dolls, biracial babies are hard to come by (like those racks of nameplate necklaces that will never have Saskia on them, at least not in this country). I started trolling for them occasionally a while back. I started looking again yesterday. There isn’t a whole lot out there (dolls have not caught up with Sandra and Myles’ Pinkney’s wonderful board book, Shades of Black). I found a couple of possible plastic ones and a handmade cloth one, too.
Saskia is very light, such that she “passes” (or put another way: Saskia is part of a Caucasian family with two dark-haired, dark-eyed parents; her coloring more nearly mirrors her adoptive mama’s than the three kids that same mama birthed). Much more complicated than the dolls will be the rest, obviously (the open part of our open adoption is with the Caucasian family; we’ve never met the Jamaican family members and such a meeting is unlikely any time soon). For now, we’re reading. And as we read—and re-read, because like her eldest brother, Saskia is very much at home with her books—these ideas—race, adoption—drift into the conversation, like the doll that may one day find her way here, the biracial baby especially intended for Saskia.
