Before Noah was born I had to explain to the kids that no, we could not choose the sex of the baby, nor could we choose his eye color, hair color or even type of hair. That was a tough concept for them, and while Cecilia took quite a while to digest this information, she finally accepted that she would be getting a baby brother rather than a sister, and that while his hair might turn out curly like hers there was a pretty good chance it would end up straight like "everyone else" in the family (a major hang-up for her for most of her short life thus far).
Just a week before Noah's birth we were all riding in the car together when from the back seat Cecilia asked, "Mama? Can we choose the color of the baby's skin, or is it going to be black like the other people in Gabon?" Stifling a laugh I calmly explained that a baby's skin color comes from the mama and papa, and that we were not actually Gabonese, so in our case, no, the baby would not have black skin.
Olivier leaned over from the driver's seat, looked back at Cilia, and announced "He'd better not have black skin, Cecilia".
