Friday, December 5, 2008

A Rite of Passage

A few posts ago I mentioned how badly Caleb (and Josh) needed haircuts, and since I was tired of paying $20 each for haircuts they didn't like, I figured it was time to start doing them myself again. Caleb was less than excited about it, but considering the alternative was for me to cut his hair at night while he was asleep (with presumable worse results) he settled in for the ordeal. I didn't do a terrible job but since the boy likes his hair a la Albert Einstein style, I'd say we're both satisfied.
I had turned on How the Grinch Stole Christmas for him to watch during the haircut, and figured this was a good time to run upstairs and take a shower, assuming Esther was as engrossed in the movie as the boys. My first mistake. My second was to leave the haircutting scissors on the table. You can probably guess what is coming next! I returned from my shower to see this on the floor:


And my first thoughts were, "Please let that be cat hair, please let that be cat hair - it's too long to be cat hair - aaaaah!" Esther was pretty proud to have accomplished something so grown-up by herself, and I just couldn't get mad at her.
Sad, though. Very sad. We were just getting to the point where her hair was filling in and she looked less like a boy and more like a girl!
I think she caught on that her attempts at self trim didn't make me ecstatic, but I know it could have been much, much worse. She only took a little off the front and focused mainly on one side and the back. When I put her hair up into two ponytails, one is significantly shorter than the other! I love this girl, though we are back to wearing pink, pink, pink, and people still think she's a boy if her hair is down. Sigh.