Cutting the Hair That Was Barely There

This has been a nice little bloggy break. I'm feeling in the story-sharing mood again, though.

But really, how could I not post about Cambrie's first more-than-a-trim haircut? I know there are a lot of little kids whose hair takes a while to grow in, but it seems all of Cambrie's little friends have approximately seven and a half times as much hair has she does. Even the boys. This means her hair journey is worth chronicling, whether for other fair-and-fine-haired parents to commiserate, or for me to look back on for reassurance if another little girl makes her way into our family. (Thank goodness this next one is a boy--no one cares if little boy babies are bald.)

Now, you've seen pictures of this kid. Her hair is not long. The main problem is it was CRAZY.

A little crazy, right? Go ahead, scroll down.

Yeah. This mess of crazy-fine-tangly-frizzy-wannabe-curly-hair was kinda the norm.

Those are the little side-wispies that make me shake my head now, but I feel like I'll probably remember fondly in, say, ten years. :-)

My main dilemma with her was that everything was uneven. It popped into cute curls about 20% of the time, but the other 80% was outta control. Even though I long for that nice, long, substantial hair (the nice thick hair that runs in Patrick's family, but definitely not my own), I finally came to grips with the fact that I was going to have to wait a little longer. I'm still crossing my fingers that the old idea of cutting hair to make it grow in a little thicker works. At the very least, I needed to get rid of that tangly, overgrown baby hair to give the newer hair time to catch up.

Here are some more pictures of what was going to have to go:

Awful awful picture, but you can see how long her hair was wet. Long and thin and straggly.

Here's her ponytail in its adorable stage. Yes, if you pulled on the curl, it would bounce. *sniff* Goodbye, curl.

So, in the interest of saving money and developing basic hair-trimming skills (and since I was certain nothing could look crazier than the current "do"), I decided I'd have a go at Cambrie's hair myself. Goals? 1) Bring as much of her hair to a matching length as possible. 2) Clear out some of the finer, wispier baby hair. 2) Make it look like her hair was more on purpose, rather than haphazard and messy.

The solution? A chair, shears, hair clips, a comb, and Curious George. Several tentative snips and "No! Stop moving, don't touch that, look at the TV"s later, here's what we had:

I know, it doesn't look like a lot, but for better or worse, it made a huge difference.

Here it is, still a little wet. I trimmed all her long straggliness to right below her ears, then gave her a very slight layer above it. It's already starting to dry here, which means it will all look shorter.

Here she is, still captivated by Curious George, with the hair a little drier, not really combed at all. The waves are coming back, and you can see how it could look like it was meant to be a very short cropped cut.

A word about bangs: Her hair in the front and sides is growing very slowly. If I had my way, I'd prefer no bangs so I could leave her hair down and nicely brushed or clip it in a cute way to the side. Here's an idea of what I mean:

(My real source was a google image search, but in the interest of giving proper credit, here ya go.) 

However, I don't think Cambrie's hair will be that long for a while. In the interest of giving it another chance, I did not trim her bangs in this haircut (I've done it a few times before to even things out). I'm hoping her hair will get that burst of growth soon. *fingers crossed* We'll see. For the time being, I'll try to sweep them to the side more.

Current pictures (note the side wisps are still there--they weren't even long enough to reach the shortest layer I did in back, but I gave them a teeny trim anyways to even them out and hopefully encourage more growth.)

Meet one of her monkeys and Baby Maggie. Umm, and another forced smile.

Sometimes it's this wavy, and sometimes it lies straighter. Over all, I think it has more structure and less crazy. I can still do pigtails and other fun things up top, which is one thing I definitely wanted.

Here's the before picture again, for comparison:

Goodbye, crazy poofy mess! I do not miss you.

In my shamelessly biased opinion, I really do think Cambrie is cute no matter what her hair looks like. However, I also like that she looks a little less like a hooligan, now, when we take her out. She can be a hooligan all she wants at home, but by golly, those other moms at the library are going to see nothing but a perfectly coiffed little angel!

....BAH! Hahaha! Oh, *whew* that was funny. In any case, at least she'll look like mommy spent at least 30 seconds on her hair. I guess we're just going to have to continue to see how her hair fills out from here.