A haircut.

You might remember that I recently cut Austin's hair. 

Lately it's become a daily battle to do Lydia's hair. Usually she cries and and I fight/bribe her to let me either comb it or pull it back into a ponytail (it's amazing how a ponytail can cover up the rats nest in the back). I kept threatening her and telling her that if she wouldn't let me comb/do her hair we were going to give her a haircut. For some reason she hated this idea and said that she wanted her hair long and not short. I actually really loved her hair at the length that it was and didn't particularly want to cut it but finally I reached my limit and decided that it had to be done so that we could stop with the hair-coming battle. So I pulled up a youtube video about how to cut a little girls bob (which is actually the same video that I used the first time I cut her hair) and we started. I didn't even take a before picture. But what used to be this:  

Is now this!

I feel so proud of myself for cutting her hair myself. I think it turned out so good. I'm sure it's not really at a professional level - but I don't think anyone can really tell. It's already been such a huge game changer for us. Lydia loves it, she loves that we only have to comb through it each day. I love that I don't have to fight through the tangles on the back of her hair. 

Maybe it's silly but I'm already having dreams of cutting her hair in lots of different hairstyles as she gets older. Like, sitting down with her and figuring out what she wants her hair to be like and then figuring out how to cut it and making it happen. I've even thought about taking a haircutting class or some such thing. But probably YouTube University is the best I'll get. 

Thank you Lydia for teaching me so many different skills as a mother! I hope you love your new haircut.

Lydia's First Haircut

Well, actually, it's more like "Lydia's First Hair-trim". You may think that we're crazy to be cutting Lydia's hair when she has so little of it - but the back had grown out much longer than the front/top and so I decided to just trim the mullet section off. It should be noted that my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws (Wendy and Amy), were very much opposed to this operation. But as much as I loved the little baby curls in the back, it made me sad when the back got matted and tangled and bothered Lydia. Plus, I'm fairly opposed to baby mullets. I'd been talking about cutting it for several weeks, but today when David asked if I would cut his hair I knew that it was time. 

Here are our before pictures:  

You can see how it's just so much longer in the back. 

During: 

Lyd was a champ. She was a little hesitant about the clippers (you can see her keeping her eyes on the clippers at all time) and she actually did pretty good with them. But the noise was freaking her out a little so we ended up stopping with the clippers and I used scissors to finish trimming her hair.  

  

  

We sat her on the counter so that David could sit in front of her and play with her while I cut her hair. It worked really well. As far as the after pictures go, I chased her around with a camera for like 20 minutes and these are the best pictures that I came away with. You can see how nice and even everything looks. It doesn't bother her as much anymore and I think it just looks so darling!

I waited for it to grow out long enough for me to save a lock of hair. I'm going to tape it into our book after we print it out in the location below. Aren't I creative? Take that scrapbooking! 

Update: I wasn't super happy with the only after pictures that I was able to get - and after chasing Lydia around for an hour trying to get ONE picture of her smiling at me for her 15-16 month post I found that I got a whole bunch of the back of her head. Here are some cute ones where you can see how big of a difference the little trim made. I just love this sweet girl!