I appreciate your thoughts! My partner and I are certainly trying to work on this together. Maybe the birthday party thing has to do with being a white mom, but my kids have certainly been invited to plenty of birthday parties hosted by parents I haven't even met yet. I think there are probably a few factors at play here, but it certainly threw me for a loop.

There are absolutely things we miss about DC, but our experience was that interracial couples weren't exactly welcomed there with open arms. I think my kids may have felt just as out of place, if not moreso, at a public school in DC. While my partner absolutely appreciated being able to walk down the street without standing out, his diligent efforts to make Black friends mostly failed, and largely because he wasn't perceived as "Black enough." (I wrote another story on this topic: "My Husband is Either Too Black or Not Black Enough.") So that's all to say that every city or town comes with its tradeoffs. I remain grateful that my kids are at a school where their brown skin doesn't make them an anomaly and I remain committed to trying to diversify our circles outside of school as much as possible. In the meantime, we try to take advantage of all the amazing things the Pacific Northwest has to offer to remember why moved here in the first place!