Ethiopian Build A Bear

Grace has been doing a lot of identifying people as Ethiopian lately. For example, she will point to someone who is African American and say..."look, she Ethiopian!" Well...it is sort of funny. Did you know Oprah is Ethiopian (not really)? Apparently the TV repair guy that came to our house is as well (no)...so is the nice lady that was sitting behind us in church on Sunday (nope)...you get the picture. So, it was not a surprise when Grace decided to make her new Build A Bear an Ethiopian bear. Grace received a gift card to Build A Bear as a welcome home gift from some friends. They thought it would be nice for her to "make a friend." It turned out to be a great idea. Grace had no idea what I was talking about when I told her that we were going to the mall to build a bear friend. She said she wanted it to be an Ethiopian bear, so I showed her all of the brown bears. We lined them up and SHE said that she wanted a certain bear because the fur matched her skin. It was really sweet. I decided that since she is talking about Ethiopia and loving her beautiful skin color, we should use one of those little voice recorders in her bear. We recorded her sweet little voice (Ethiopian accent and all) saying "I LOVE ETHIOPIA!" and the sound box is now tucked in the bear's foot. Every time you squeeze the bear's foot(paw, I guess) it says (proudly) "I love Ethiopia!"
She had so much fun. She walked in the store and looked around with amazement. It was so precious to see. It is so refreshing considering all of our other kids are so used to shopping, toy stores, and material junk. I loved watching her experience something so fun in a pure way. She had no idea such stores even existed before yesterday.

Grace giving her bear's heart a kiss and making a wish for the bear.

Giving her new bear a bath. Guess what Grace decided to name her bear? Hiwot. I love it!

She thought that the underwear was the funniest thing. She loved seeing the bear's little tail sticking out the backside of the underwear :)

Just like at home, Grace had a hard time picking out clothes. We tried a ton of outfits on her bear Hiwot, and I finally had to just lay out a few choices and have her pick (she knows the drill because we struggle with this daily...she usually only has two or three choices and must pick one to wear).

Our trip to Build A Bear was a ton of fun. Of course the other kids were thrilled to see her bear after school and all four kids got out bears, clothes, etc. and spent a lot of time playing with their furry friends.

One last super cute story that made me smile...Bryce's little friend Benny was over to play on Saturday. The boys are seven and are seriously sweet little guys. They had a great time playing. They were nice enough to let Grace play with them a little too. Benny went home and was talking to his mom about the play date. He said to her, "How can Grace be three already? I don't even remember Mrs. M. being pregnant." So cute!!! I love that kids don't really think anything of the whole skin color thing (unless you are an adopted little girl who is noticing other "Ethiopians" everywhere you go).

Hope you have a wonderful Wednesday!!!