Wednesday, December 12, 2007

An Unfortunate Run-in with Scissors


I've had a few requests for this story, so I figured it would be easier to post. If you've already read it then you'll just have to wait for my next fabulous post....until then!


Don’t worry – no one was bodily harmed! And hair is technically already dead, right?

I guess I’ve been lucky all these years that it hasn’t happened sooner; but lately the children have been very into drawing and cutting and gluing. So they all have their little pencil box with their crayons, pencils, erasers, and scissors. The glue I keep to myself until it is called for, as I’ve already had to clean up a few sticky messes. And the scissors have been taken away a time or two due to cutting of objects other than paper, but no major offenses, and no body parts had been previously involved.

So last night the kids were all sitting up at the table working on their Christmas wish lists; it was time for bed for the 2 youngest because of an earlier refusal to take a nap. They weren’t very happy to leave their lists, but I promised I would leave everything out so they could work on them as soon as they got up in the morning (which, as a side note, made my life easier since I didn’t have to pick everything up before I went to bed).

Fast forward through sleepy time to this morning. All seems to be well. The kids get up and color, etc… watch a little TV, have a little breakfast. I finally decide to do something useful with my Saturday so Abby and I set out to organize the mountains of baby clothes that my sister-in-law (amongst other contributors and hand-me-downs from the other girls) has sent my way over the last month or so. So we’re ohh-ing and ahh-ing over the mounds of cute and adorable outfits, sorting them out by size to our hearts content. I go in the living room to check on the other 2 and a couple of the neighbor kids that are watching TV and coloring and what do I find….

…a pile of beautiful blond hair strewn about the couch and living room floor!

Luckily I had had the forethought to actually do her hair this morning, so it was in a ponytail at the time of the incident. This made for an unfortunate chop near her cowlick, but it saved the vast majority of her hair from being cut off so short. The hair on her head really didn’t look all that bad, but I just about cried over the 3 inch chunks of hair that lay no longer attached to my “yellow” haired 3 year old.

Then I thought – who else has been cutting their hair? The 2 neighbor kids over are Samoan and hair is a BIG deal – boys do not get their hair cut until they are at least 8 years old and the girls really don’t ever get their hair cut. The 2 kids were both girls. Luckily it seemed that neither had participated, nor even noticed that anything had happened. I quickly sent them home before any further involvement on their part.

After the initial shock and recovery, I took Danielle out to the porch and began damage control. Her hair was just really starting to get long. It was finally all one length and had passed her shoulders. And did I mention that it’s a beautiful blond color? That’s very uncommon here in Hawaii and she gets comments on it all the time – especially from the Asians. They always want to take her picture.

I took a deep breath and chopped it all off at her chin (the back was the only part that was still long - talk about a horrible mullet!) and worked from there. I’m actually kind of pleased with how it turned out, though it still sort of sticks up at the shortest part – right in the middle of her head. Oh, and I can definitely take hair accessories off her Christmas list!

Needless to say, it’s been an interesting day here at the Peterson house and this all happened before lunch! Hopefully that will be all the excitement for a while, I really don’t think I can handle anymore, at least not today. I did finally got to sorting through the rest of the baby clothes – let me tell you, this will be the best-dressed baby that I’ve ever had and I haven’t even bought any of the clothes! Though the whole process wasn’t quite as fun as it started out being. Oh well.

OK, I should get back to doing…something… I’m sure there’s laundry or dishes or whatever that needs to be done, not to mention end of the semester homework (only 4 more days of class!) that I’m procrastinating getting done.

I didn’t have the sense to take one while I was in a state of shock, before I did the “damage control” but you’ll still get the idea. I did attatch 4 after shots of Miss Danielle for you viewing pleasure – because she is too stinkin’ cute – even with short hair. But keep in mind that this is right after I cut it and blew it dry to see if it looked OK – it looks NOTHING like this now that she’s been playing outside all afternoon!

No comments: