Julie's first haircut

I had been dreading this day for about 3 years. Cut my baby's hair? How could I ever do it? It was so long and beautiful, and one feature that always drew compliments. But eventually it became and inevitability.

Last summer, I started talking myself into it, telling myself that it would probably have to happen sometime this summer. (I myself was four years old (I think), when my mom took my for my first haircut.) I began to take more time enjoying brushing Julie's long beautiful hair, each time I had the opportunity, knowing that soon she'd be hitting a major growing-up milestone.

Paying more attention to her hair, I noticed that the bottom three to four inches were a lot drier and more brittle than the rest. She had really bad split ends. And she has a habit of pulling out her own rubber bands, which rips through her hair in a bad way, so she had a lot of breakage from that. If she ever didn't have her hair pulled back for Saturday morning pancakes, the syrup wreaked havoc on her hair.

It soon became apparent that we couldn't put it off any longer. At that point I started to think about how Julie herself would react to getting her hair cut. I practically have to put her in restraints to clip her nails (though in over four years, I've never once accidentally snipped her skin), so I was worried this would be a terrible ordeal.

I started talking with her about it a few weeks in advance, asking if she wanted to get her hair cut (like Rapunzel) to keep it pretty and healthy. She was resistant (though not panicky) at first, but eventually ceded to the idea. We also talked about how we can only cut hair with special hair-cutting scissors (hoping to prevent her from getting any clever ideas of her own at home...), and how we don't have any in the house. We talked about going to a special hair-cutting store, and sitting in a cool chair that goes up and down in front of a big mirror. She seemed amenable to the idea.

Eventually I made an appointment, and made it on a day that Ben could go with us. I still didn't know what her reaction would be when it came down to go-time, and since she's a Daddy's girl, I knew I wanted reinforcement, just in case. She was a little scared at first, but it was more of a new setting/new situation scared than anything else. We showed her the "cool" apron they had, with pretty flowers on one side, and an army design ("like Uncle Josh") on the other side. I showed her the special hair-cutting scissors we had talked about, and how the chair moved. She eventually let us sit her in the chair, in front of Scooby Doo, and with Daddy's iPod. She wouldn't keep her head down enough when they asked her to, but other than that, she did much better than expected. At the end (and for the next few days), she kept telling us, "the haircut scissors not hurt!"

Whew! Crisis averted.

In the end, we only took enough off to clean up the split ends and ratty dryness. She still has long and beautiful hair, just not quite as long as before.

We accidentally left the camera in the car, so we didn't get "real" before/after pictures, so I've got a before picture from a few months earlier, low-quality iPod pictures from during, and afters pictures later at home again.

This is actually from back in April -- I took it because I loved how you could see the different color tones in her hair, woven through the braid.

During the haircut. Calm as can be.









And after. Not much difference, but she proudly displayed it for me.





Before and after, side by side: