It's Matthew!

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We're part of a transracial adoption playgroup so my boys are used to seeing families that are made of up of different colors. Since we do go to this group frequently, Matthew is able to see a lot of brown kids interacting with their lily white parents.

Matthew also refuses to learn his colors. For the longest time I thought he was severely colorblind but now I know that he can see a difference, he just chooses not to acknowledge their names. I'd think that he was just having a really hard time learning them but this makes no sense because he basically self taught himself all the letters in the alphabet.

All that to say, he won't point at something and call it red or blue or brown.

Matthew knows that when we go to playgroup he is going to see other brown kids. He knows that at church he's going to see some brown people. But, when he is expecting just another sea of white, he's developed an interesting phrase.

He did it at the pool first. There was a brown boy with a white family and he shouted out, "He's Matthew! He's Matthew!" At first I thought that maybe he'd heard someone say the boy's name and that it was also Matthew.

"His name is Matthew, too?" I asked.

"No! He's Matthew! Like me! Look!" Then he frantically pointed to his arm and then pointed to the boy.

"Oh! Yes. He is brown like you! How cool!" I smiled.

Last week, we were watching Olympic gymnastics. John Orozco came on. Matthew nearly exploded off the couch. "Look at him! He's a Matthew! He's a Matthew like me!"

What's interesting is that we have a lot of books that have all different shades of people. Sometimes I will ask the boys which one they look the most like, just to see how they identify themselves. Garrett has reached an age where he identifies himself as "white" and will almost always identify Matthew as the brown child. With Matthew it still depends. He knows that the boy at the pool and John Orozco are the same color as him but he might identify himself as the freckled blonde kid in a children's book.

But when my son finally learns his colors, I might just miss him referring to brown as "Matthew."