Thank You…Maybe

A week or so ago my son came down around ten o'clock after having a nightmare with the net result being I sent him back upstairs a while later with his hair cut and a pact not to say anything with the hopes we'd amaze and befuddle dad.   The next day we didn't say anything, but neither did my husband.   It was such an unthinkable thing that my son's hair would magically shorten overnight that even though my husband thought it looked shorter, he never suspected his hair had actually been cut.

That was my first hair cutting.   I've trimmed the ends off my daughter's and my long hair, which isn't complicated at all.  I've also trimmed her bangs a few times, which is also a straight line cut.   Those aren't "haircuts" which really mean, "head of hair cut" in the long-form.

Cutting an actual hairstyle is an entirely other thing and it wasn't something I was dying to try out.   My son's hair is wavy and was getting really messy and he just wanted it shorter.   The wavy aspect of his hair makes it a lot more tolerant to variations in cuts, meaning I could probably do a mediocre job and no one would even know it.  I had been paying attention to how hair was cut for decades, I thought I could do it.

My son's hair looked fine, but I wasn't expecting this morning to hear my husband say, "okay, I'm ready, come in here and cut my hair."  He, too, had been paying attention to what the stylists did when they cut his hair.   He had the trimmer, I had the scissors and the thinning shears.   We had the knowledge and the tools to maybe, possibly, if we were careful and went slowly, not screw his hair up too badly.

My daughter was in the bedroom talking to us while we worked together to make safe choices on how and where to remove hair on my husband's head.   My daughter would call out, "you're not going to make daddy bald, are you?"   I assured her he would not be bald when we were done.   I said I'd let her feel the hair we'd cut off when we were done.   She did not want to feel that, thank you very much, because it was gross.   Eww.  

My daughter did eventually feel the ball of hair I had swept up before throwing it away.   She felt her father's head all over after the haircut had been done.   I only wished we'd thought to have her feel his head before.

Hair cut complete, my husband had to get ready to go show a property to a client.   Real estate continues here but it is done under very careful conditions.  My husband wasn't sure if the hair cut looked passable, good, or hacked.   As he was leaving the house he said to me, "thank you...maybe".   I think he's fine.   Worse case is it's a renewable resource.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came around the corner the other morning with a concerned look on his face.   The dog had gone stuffed animal shopping again and had a new victim from the children's room.   My son said, "Matisse has the...the...the insectivore!"   After asking a few descriptive questions I said to him, "I think you mean the grasshopper."   To his credit, he was less worried about getting the name right than he was about saving the stuffed creature from a slobbery distruction.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I was grumbling, whining, moaning about or winging on about a technical problem I coudn't figure out today on the computer.   As some point my daughter had apparently had enough and said,  "sorry I'm interrupting your pity party, but do you think you could help me with the marble run now?"