I have TWO beautiful daughters

My husband and I have a pet peeve I'd like to share with you, one that particularly frustrates P. Whenever one of us is out with the girls, strangers make a lot of comments about our youngest daughter. Seriously, if I could charge a $1 for every compliment on M's hair, we'd easily be able to fund her college. People stop us very frequently to say how beautiful M is, and mostly just ignore C. C is old enough now that she does notice, and while she doesn't say anything, you can see the hurt on her face. I think it bothers P so much because he doesn't know how to respond. I usually try to reach out to physically touch C, and say something like "thank you, we have been blessed with two beautiful daughters". Some will then say something nice about C, but you can tell that it doesn't have much meaning for her at that point.

C garnered her fair share of attention when she was a baby, but once she became a big sister that all changed. I do know that being the youngest has a lot to do with it, because last year, when we had a foster daughter 11 months younger than M, M didn't attract the same volume of attention as she did before and does now. I also understand that much of it is simply because M stands out from us. We live in a very open minded area, and I never get any stares and rarely any comments about us being a transracial family - but let's face it, people notice a brown skinned child accompanied by a caucasian parent. I'm thankful that the attention received is positive, I just wish people would be a little more sensitive.

Last night P relayed an incident to me that just broke my heart. I guess C was looking at M and said, "M, you are soooo beautiful. I wish I was beautiful like you. I wish I had curly hair like you. I wish I had brown skin like you. I wish I had brown eyes like you. I wish I had dark hair like you." Of course, P did all he could to assure her that she was indeed beautiful too.

I always figured that when the girls got older, we'd be perming C's hair and straightening M's hair, and they'd wish they looked more like the other - but I never thought it would start so soon. Meanwhile, we'll keep doing all we can to help them develop healthy self esteems that are NOT centered on their appearances.

While I'm dwelling on the physical differences between the girls, I thought I'd share a little anecdote from when C was younger. She was barely two when M was born. She must have thought that all new babies were brown, because she used to tell us that she had brown skin when she was little too. (She also used to say that her hair was going to get curly when she got older.) If I showed her a picture of her as a baby, and held it up to a picture of M, she was unable to tell me which one was her! Can you tell the difference? (These are their six month photos.)