Sasha and her Dada

A couple of weeks ago I bought Turtle and Monkey a new board book, Barack Obama 101. The first page is a photo of the First Family and as I named each person in the picture, both girls shouted, “Sasha!” It must be a delightfully fun word to say as a new speaker – fast, slow, loud, soft - because all day long we hear “Sasha SESHA Sa-SHA sesha Sasha Sasha?” Turtle in particular asks for Sasha often, which means I have to go find the book, open it to Sasha’s picture, and let her give it a kiss. We have to put “Sasha” in her bed (the bookshelf) at naptime and at bedtime, and Turtle often cries when I ask her to put Sasha down for her nap. Then she’ll repeatedly ask about her (“She’s going to sleep right now Turtle”) until I turn out the light and leave the room.

Needless to say, we’ve renamed the book Sasha. They call the other character Dada. Sometimes we try to correct: “honey, that’s President Obama and yes, he’s a man like your Dada.” But most of the time we just say, “yep, that’s Sasha’s Dada” and go on to the pages featuring Sasha’s big white house, Sasha’s airplane, Sasha’s helicopter, and Sasha’s limousine.

I am thrilled out of my mind at this development. It happened almost simultaneously with their discovery of babies, about which I'm a little more ambivalent. One day they just started pointing at strollers and saying “Babies? Babies? Babies?” Then they found their dolls and tried to wrap them in blankets and put diapers on them. I was shocked at this turn of events, having neither encouraged nor discouraged dolls, instead just letting them sit ignored in the bin with the dozens of other apparently uninteresting stuffed animals. But suddenly every stuffed animal is also an object to be loved, and petted, and carried around, and kissed. So one day, I have two babies dipping spoons in cat litter and the next I have two little girls who love their Sasha, put their dollies to bed, and carry around stuffed puppies like they were real dogs.

I have to confess that I looked for a Sasha doll online. Twin Daddy disapproved. But I looked anyway, and guess what? Michelle Obama disapproves too. It’s probably for the best – the girls have already moved on to calling each of their dollies “Sasha,” which is infinitely more creative than me handing them a Sasha doll. It also shows me that they don't need a black doll to have a Sasha, and I'm proud that they are more color blind than I am.

With every new action the girls take, I wonder - what kind of connections are they making in their little brains right now? How will this early fascination with Sasha and Dada Obama develop their views on race? How do I encourage balanced play with gender-neutral toys when it’s so darned cute to watch them try to diaper their baby dolls?

And most importantly, where did my babies go, and who are these little mamas who have taken their place?