First Hair Cut

You may have noticed from some of our Flickr pictures that John finally received his first hair cut. He was pretty much a baldy when we got here, but as of the end of April had developed a head full of pretty blond ringlets. Those pretty blond ringlets generally looked dirty and ratty unless they were within 30 minutes of being shampooed so I finally made the decision to trim them.

I have friends who talked about how hard it was to cut their kid's hair for the first time and how much they cried. But they also tend to be the kind of people who cry over almost all of their children's "first" - first time they rollover, crawl, walk. I remember being sad when John grew out of his newborn onesies and stopped nursing, but other than that I was leading the cheerleading section on all of his other firsts. So I calmly and rationally made this decision to chop off his hair and thought it wouldn't be a problem.

I made the first snip and immediately regretted it. Unfortunately cutting a toddlers hair is like deciding to ride on a roller coaster. It is wild and fast and there is no getting off. I had about 7.8 seconds to complete his first hair cut before he jumped off the chair so there was little time for pausing and tearfully reflecting on John's babyhood as I grabbed fingerfulls of hair and quickly whacked them off. And the rest of the afternoon and evening was spent in a fragile emotional state unbecoming of a woman of my self-perceived maturity and "it's just hair!" good sense. Serves me right.