[BethanyB]

Hi Reddhedded, it's good to be back on the forums again. Having two babies is not easy. But little M is beautiful. She is VERY needy though. Wants to be held every waking moment! My son learned how to walk about two months after baby M came home. But of course he runs in the opposite direction of where we need to go so it's not really helping all that much! I hope to have an adoption date for T in December and we go for termination of parental rights for M on December 19th. All in all I'm exausted but loving my kids and couldn't be happier. Thanks for asking. Your little ones must be getting big!

[whoownsthis]

I can remember having a Black babydoll (the cheap, rubbery kind with hair and eyelashes painted on) that I carried everywhere as a child (either a gift, or left at the daycare where my mom taught?). I asked my mom about it recently, and she said I would get so upset if other kids picked it up and tried to play with it. I don't even remember her having clothes...maybe just a cloth diaper. What's funny is that I remember the "color" of the doll and that it was my favorite, but at that age (3 or 4), I had no concept of race. Maybe I liked it so much because none of my other friends had dolls like it?

My holiday frustration is not being able to find wrapping paper with brown Santas, angels, little kids throwing snowballs, etc. I can't even find it online! So we're going with animal and Snowman wrapping only.



P.S. for LisaCA...the good news is that even though I played with baby dolls, my mom made sure I had lots of learning toys, too (very few science and math ones, though. Grr). I ended up completing a master's and didn't marry (or reproduce) until my late 20s.

[Jensboys]

I came here hoping someone had posted a link to a good place that someone could buy Christmas Cards that feature ANYONE other than only cc people as I am having an INCREDIBLY difficult time finding anything here in my small Canadian town ... and finding any companies that will ship said items to Canada. Anyways ... in my research I found the saying that I added to my signature. The cards were horrid but my kids thought the saying was HILARIOUS.

Hope you enjoy it too (and if anyone knows where I can find those cards in Canada, please PM me!!!)

Jen

[Sleeplvr]

Originally Posted by whoownsthis

My holiday frustration is not being able to find wrapping paper with brown Santas, angels, little kids throwing snowballs, etc. I can't even find it online! So we're going with animal and Snowman wrapping only.

Target usually has the wrapping paper with brown Santas, angels and kids on it. I usually buy some before Christmas and then after Christmas I try to get whatever they have left and save it for next year. All Targets don't have the paper so you may have to check around. When I get home tonight I'll see if I can find the name of the company that makes the paper and post it here.
If you can't find it at Target, fddesigns.com has wrapping paper and Christmas cards.


BethanyB

Welcome back! I have been thinking about you and the babies. I'm so glad your little boy is walking. It must have been really hard carrying both of them.
My little girl is now 19 lbs and the little boy is 21 lbs. They are big babies with big feet. Oh my aching back.

[MMC66]

I know Unicef isn't super popular with the adoption crowd - mostly their international adoption politics but they have awesome christmas cards with lots of ethnic groups represented. They have a web site. No clue about wrapping paper - that's a toughie - I don't usually get paper with people on it anyway though.

Martha

[Sleeplvr]

You can order cards from the Hallmark website. Their AA line is called Mahogany. There's not much of a selection online but you can search for retailers that carry the full line of cards.

American Greetings AA card line is called Baobab Tree. They also have a Hispanic card line called La Flor.

Or better yet, take a digital photo of your family and have it made into a Christmas card. Put your tree up early and gather the family around it and take a photo to put on the card. Stores like Wal-mart, Target and drugs store will turn the photos into cards.

I saw ethnic Christmas cards at Kroger last week and they were already 50% off. They had various designs with AA and Hispanic images on them. I should have bought a box but I was there at 5am buying formula. I am not a morning person so the I should have bought that thought did not kick in until later in the day.

[missw005]

Hey ladies......
Here are some places/websites I've used - not sure they'll work for you, Jen, as you're in Canada - but you never know, right?

As always, eBay - I've bought AA Christmas cards, ornaments, dolls, GI Joes, the Green Lantern (who is now black), Christmas ornaments and decorations, games........you name it.

Hope that helps!!

Sandy

Edited to remove retail URL's

[mallory4]

Saw the posts about books, and thought I'd post a couple off the top of my head. We have more but I don't want to wake the tots up rifling through their shelves.

My almost 2 year old's favorite board book is Chugga-Chugga Choo Choo by Kevin Lewis. When I was paging through at the bookstore, I was thrilled to see it features a little aa boy (who looks like my little guy, to boot!) as the owner of the toy train. The artwork is great, too. I think one of the other toys featured in the background on one page is an aa cowboy, so that's another reason for us to love it.

For the picture book set, Raising Dragons by Jerdine Nelson has lushly colorful illustrations and is the story of a spunky little aa girl growing up on a farm who raises a dragon...she has overalls and pigtails and couldn't be more appealing.

I'll post more if I can find them and they are still in print--my girls are so old now, most of their books don't have too many pictures

[mallory4]

Also, if there are any mostly aa neighborhoods in your town, you might check out their branch of the public library. I used to work at Barnes & Noble, and when we moved to the city and began using a branch of the library in a predominantly aa area, I was knocked out by the number of books they have featuring aa characters--I had sure never seen most of them at the suburban store where I worked

Happy Hunting!

[joskimo]

Originally Posted by Sleeplvr

Or better yet, take a digital photo of your family and have it made into a Christmas card. Put your tree up early and gather the family around it and take a photo to put on the card. Stores like Wal-mart, Target and drugs store will turn the photos into cards.

Costco does this too, you order on-line from digital, very quick process. Here's our Xmas girls.Xmas card pic of the girls

BTW - no black Santas here but we are going to a Filipino Xmas party tomorrow night so dd#2's first Santa will be Filipino

[missw005]

Hey everybody,

Just returned from an overnight shopping trip with the boys. Virtually no luck with African American anything - EXCEPT for........(drum roll please) TJ Maxx.

(stunned pause)
TJ Maxx??????? Believe it or not, I found African American Santas, toys, dolls, books - even stockings with AA Santa on them. WOW. No deal for Target, Kmart, Shopko, and (surprising to me) Pier 1 Imports. I mean, Pier 1 is supposed to be this international company - and I was informed by management that many of their furniture pieces and knick knacks were from African nations - but ixnay on the brown colored people products anywhere in the store.

Oh! And J did find a small AA Santa tree topper at Walgreens, which was cheaply made, but I figure no one will see it up close anyway.

So......success!! Any luck yet, Jensboys?

Sandy

[Jensboys]

Any luck yet, Jensboys?

I am happy to say that I DID find wrapping paper (which I wasnt even looking for) with people of all races on it at of all places, the "Real Canadian Superstore" ! YEAH YEAH

Christmas Cards still are proving to be elusive for all of us in this town! A couple of my friends and I have registered at our local card store and the manager from the "big city" is supposedly coming up this week and it has been requested that she bring in cards for us. We will see ...

Jen

[redhedded]

There is so much available in my area. We had no problem finding AA Santa, though my dd insisted on staying in the car with my mom and asked, "mama, I do not want to talk to santa; can you whisper to him that I want Hullabaloo by Cranium." My ds, who just turned one year, screamed his head off and reached for me. My scanner is broken or I would upload the photo; I think I can get it on disk at Target.

[LisaCA]

here in Los angeles I've given up on the black santa for this year. called everywhere and no luck. All they have is the "traditional santa". so off we go to get the photos with Traditional Santa. Maybe next year... or we'll just have to find some older black guy to dress up just for us . dh would do it but he's not quite old enough and can't grow facial hair to save his life. Plus he would claim his gut isn't big enough, lol.

[AeroBeachBaby18]

Does anyone here remember the kenya dolls? They were made by this one toyline which created specialized dolls for AA girls and it showed you how to braid and brush the dolls hair and you had special lotion you could use with it. Growing up this was my favorite doll and always anticipated holidays wondering what kind of Kenya stuff I would get next.I think they still can be found at toys r us and target.