And it only took an hour and a half to convince Madison that posing with Jessica and her boyfriend wouldn’t kill her. But first we had to do two things: Make Jessica’s fabulous (and oh so handsome) boyfriend step out of the picture for awhile; and then bribe Madison with suckers. I mean like this: Take a picture, give her a lick of a sucker (Jessica palmed it so you can’t see it in the pics). It was hell for the an hour and a half before we figured out that she’d give a smile for a lick of green sucker but the pics were worth it.

When we first came in the photographer reasonably assumed that Jessica and Nate were here to take a family picture with their daughter and so they were saying, “Come be by mommy and daddy!” And that’s always awkward at first but I just said, “She calls them Jessica and Nate” and then it all moved smoothly. I was thinking about this because there’s that whole “I forget my child is black” kind of thing in transracial adoption and I don’t really forget that Madison is black but I do forget that it’s something that matters or comes up for other people. In the same way, I don’t forget that Jessica is Madison’s first mom but I do forget that our family (all of us together) looks confusing. At the beginning I felt very conscious of it (and of our transracialness) but now I forget until it somehow gets brought up. My family feels very normal to me and I forget that statistically, we’re a little odd.

Anyhow, the pictures are done. Jessica picked out the poses and the one of her with Madison is very funny and the one with the three of them is oh so nice with Madison and Jessica looking exactly the same right down to their smiley dents (Madison’s are dimples but Jessica’s are less dimples and more dents). And Nate is just so handsome with these big blue eyes. It was a task well accomplished.

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