Our good friend’s son is a quarter Mexican and she shaves his head. Supposedly if you shave a kid’s head then his hair will come in thicker and faster much like what happened when I started shaving (my face) in sixth grade. I remember when I was a toddler we didn’t have a huge duplex so my bed was next to my parent’s in their room. Many mornings I’d watch my father shave at the mirror after his shower, and when I first shaved it was with the blade pointed away from my skin since I was about 8 years old. I eventually turned it around, and I will never forget that first morning my face was actually cold. All day long I felt like someone rubbed Vick’s Vapor Rub all over my chest, but I got used to it and now shave much less. To the point that one year recently I didn’t shave at all. I think it was more in response to a job I hated, and the Grizzly Adams’ jokes were a plenty until I finally shaved.

So tonight we dragged the baby into the bathroom and tried to figure out which blade size to use. I grabbed a random one that looked good and ended up with a “6” to trim her hair. Her ears were hidden behind long strawberry blonde wisps that wrapped around the back of her head into a baby mullet. Slowly the clipper buzzed, and Donna slowly clipped the excess baby strands from the baby’s head. Even though the clippers were very quiet, Claire got scared of the clipper’s teeth that snipped fragile baby hair from her head.

Eventually, we finished her hair and I felt left out. I pulled my shirt over my head, sat on the toilet seat and begged Donna to cut my hair, too. She pulled out an “8” since I am not 11 months old and have to go to work before starting with a reverse Mohawk that surprisingly didn’t look that bad. She ran the clippers back and forth across my head while a snow storm of fine brown hair floated down over me and over Claire who had cuddled in fear into my lap with her new, balanced baby hair cut.

I kind of hoped Claire would get the point that haircuts are ok, much unlike vacuum cleaners from which she crawls screaming to hide under the coffee table. She never did take to it very well, as you can tell from the photo. We even tried to let her stand while cutting her hair, and as you can tell, Donna had way too much fun.

Sorry, Claire. We all have bad hair days.