Flower Girl Takes Hair Into Her Own Hands

Allison had been begging me to get her hair cut for the past few weeks.  "Mom, I want it shoulder length!" The last time she got her haircut, she tricked her dad into it by tagging along with her brother on one of his journeys to Great Clips. "Daddy!  I need to have my haircut!  My ends are really dry!  They're all split!"  Of course, being a normal dad, he had no idea what this really meant, but it sounded legitimate. My friend Claire (who happened to be there with her son) and the stylist confirmed that 'dry ends' was an absolutely acceptable reason for a trim, and a few minutes later, Allison was in the chair.  She was 4, and  unbelievably pleased with herself. The thing is, her ends WERE really dry, and they DID need to be trimmed.

The evidence.

This time around, I had been putting her off, because my sister's wedding was coming up and I wanted to be able to sweep it up into a little minibun.  I promised her we would get it cut the week after the wedding, but the night before we were to leave on our early morning flight, I walked into the shower and saw Allison with her hand holding a lock of hair, scissors in the other. There may have been screaming.  I don't exactly remember.

Feeling remorseful.

Honestly, it could have been worse.  She was caught just in time.  Not that I was going to let her off the hook, even though, when I was about her age, I did the same thing.  Only worse.  I had two pig tails, and I chopped both of them off at the base, then was about to get started on my cousin's hair.  I was caught in time to save her, but not in time to save my bottom from a sound smacking.  That was back in the old days when you could whack your kids but you didn't really take them in for a paid haircut.  Well-meaning moms just got out their bowls and cut their kids' hair at home.  My hair therefore looked terrible for a long time while it grew out.

I asked Allison, "Why did you do it?"  Even though I already knew what the answer would be.  She shrugged. If you ask 10 women if they ever cut their own hair as girls, I bet 7 of them would say yes. All I would be able to come up with is an underlying vague yet overwhelming feeling of compulsion and self-determination. Allison's pretty smart, but I would be apoplectic if she could articulate that.  If someone asked me why I cut my hair when I was little, I would have shrugged too. Not that I'm going to tell her any of this, because I want her to be remorseful and remember to exercise self-control when she gets an uncontrollable urge to pierce something or get the Rolling Stone lips tattooed on her groin. (I've seen this and it's not what I would call classy.)  Hair at least grows back.  The Rolling Stone tattoo will be there when she is once again getting her diapers changed, only this time in a nursing home, and frankly, I don't want the caregivers to snicker behind her back just in case she is not as hard of hearing as they think.

Why should I care so much about her hair, anyway?  (I'll be struggling with this question for the next 20 years or more.) It's her hair.  And really, she didn't do that awful of a job.  Not that I'm going to tell her that anytime soon. After evening it out a little, there was still plenty left for an updo. She pulled off the part of the flower girl without a hitch.

NO SPELLS AT THE DINNER TABLE!

C'mon, Daddy. I can skip a bath tonight.

Michael and Allison, like many children, sometimes have difficulty demonstrating ideal behavior at the dinner table.  We feel it's important to impart on them the basic rules of civility, not because we think they're someday going to be invited to have tea with the queen, but more to save ourselves embarrassment should we find ourselves in some sort of semi-formal dining situation with all of the kids in tow.  Right now, we try to avoid those situations, because the twins like to fling their food on the floor, or better yet, mash food into the hair and yell, "HAT!" When this happens, my husband and I look at each other and calmly debate whether they need to be bathed that night. "You think she needs a bath? Her hair's only a little crusty, it's not noticeable..."



We make them sweep up after themselves. 

At this point, in all honesty, the physical mess isn't really the most exhausting part of dinner. A few swipes with a wet cloth, which may or may not have been used to wipe the floor earlier in the day, is really all you need to get the little ones clean enough to haul to the bathroom to hose them down.  That's all just physical exhaustion.  That's not nearly as bad as the mental exhaustion of trying to keep up with the older childrens' antics.





 Despite our best efforts, or perhaps as a result of our best efforts, we often find ourselves yelling things like:

      Please use your utensils!
      Do you not have a napkin?
      Your seat needs to be in contact with your seat!
      No dark curses at the dinner table!

                 and finally,

      NO SPELLS AT THE DINNER TABLE!

The kids recently went through a Harry Potter phase, and were doing things like waving a knife and yelling, "Accio ketchup!" and "Accio napkin!" Never mind that the spells resulted in them actually getting their ketchup and napkins (if your kid asks for a napkin at the dinner table, you hop right to it, believe me).  From their point of view, "But Mom, the spell works!  I have my napkin don't I?"
Let me reiterate. NO SPELLS AT THE DINNER TABLE!
I wanted them to practice their pleases and thank-yous, after all.

Master Potter himself, and Princess Hermione.

This scenario, which has happened more than once, generally evolves into them trying to get through the rest of dinner with an accent.  They start with British, which then morphs into Australian, Scottish, and Italian.  Yes, of course it's difficult to keep a straight face, especially since Allison's accents are indistinguishable from one another, and Michael's British accent, as one British friend put it, is pure rubbish.  Maybe if I wasn't trying to glare at them, or at their father, who often joins in, I wouldn't be so mentally exhausted. Maybe next time, I'll just let them practice unfettered, just in case they do get invited to tea with the queen.  I'm sure she'll appreciate their rubbish.

Team Michael

We had taken the whole family down to the park near our house, and the olders had run off to do their own thing.  We suddenly heard this screeching and wailing that sounded barely human-  it turned out to be Michael, hysterical. Another boy had accidentally hit him in the tooth with a swing, and half his tooth had chipped off.  He was bleeding, but fortunately, like all good Northwesterners, we had brought a towel to the playground to wipe the rain off the play structures, so we had something to hold pressure. I took a look.  His lip wasn't cut up too badly, but indeed half his tooth was missing.  My beautiful boy.

He gave me permission to post this.

In the meantime, the other kid was pacing back and forth, wailing, "I'm a terrible person!  I'm a terrible person!  Oooooooooh!  I'm a terrible person!"  My daughter was wailing, because she was so scared.  And then the twins started wailing, because it was the thing to do, while we were trying to give this kid our phone number and call our dentist's office. I'm pretty sure there was no one else in the park, because we had scared everyone away.

from colgate.com

I should mention that Michael in the past year has lost enthusiasm for going to the dentist. He has an overactive gag reflex, was having difficulty with x-rays, and at one point, a hygienist told him that if he didn't brush his teeth better, he was going to need a Root Canal.  In his mind, a Root Canal was about the worst thing that could possibly happen. At any rate, when he found out that he might need a root canal because of the exposed pulp on his broken tooth, he nearly jumped out of the chair. The very nice dentist explained the procedure in detail, which helped mainly because my kid finds comfort in details.

Move over, Edward. There's a new guy in town.

That night he said to me, "Mom. Some things in life are really hard." I wanted to express to him that it was hard to watch your kids go through stuff like that, and so I said, "You know, parenting is really hard..." He interrupted me, "No kidding, Mom. I mean, the twins are super hard to take care of, even for me."  Umm, okay. Then, without skipping a beat, he goes, "Well, at least it's easier to floss now."

I found out the next day that when he got sick of telling people at school the whole story, he started saying that he had been bitten by a 5 y/o vampire, one that had just lost her first tooth.  Which was why only one of his teeth was now pointy.  I understand some girls go for the whole vampire thing, so if American dentistry somehow fails him, at least he'll have that going for him.

*The dentist was ultimately able to fix his tooth, and so far, no Root Canal!