she's cool for the summer

for star wars day last week - you know, "may the fourth be with you?" - the bean was allowed to dress accordingly for school.  and because she has so much freaking hair, i figured we'd make it extra fun with some leia buns.

yeah yeah, i know that bun on the left side is pretty wonky looking.  this kid has a ton of hair!  it was a little difficult for me to wrangle it all into those two buns, let me tell you.

plus, i'm really glad she's still at an age where she's totally willing to wear stuff i make for her.  hell, she still has me pick out what she's going to wear for the day.  her sister at this age...not so much.  by the time that girl was 4, i couldn't even shop for her clothes solo anymore.  but this one, she's perfectly happy with whatever i pick.

her hair, on the other hand, is the one thing about her appearance that she is fairly picky about.  she'd been after me for months to chop off her hair, and i was succeeding at putting her off by telling her that we didn't know what hairstyle her dance teachers would want for the recital in june.  she asked one day during class though, and found out that they weren't being particularly strict about hair for either of the two dance numbers she's participating in.

and so after my struggle with those leia buns that morning, we made a phone call to the local kids' hair salon to see if they could fit her in that day.  and since it was in the middle of the week, they had an opening at the exact time we wanted it. she was stoked.

here's the "before":

it really had gotten pretty stinking long, and looking closely at it all, she definitely needed a few inches cut off as the ends were looking kinda scraggly.  when the stylist asked us if we were donating it, she immediately nodded her head and i asked if we could measure out the required 9" minimum to see how short it would end up.

while that wasn't necessarily as short as SHE wanted it, i told her that we still needed a bit of length for me to do stuff with it.  she was after a chin-length bob, while i was having flashbacks of her sister at that age getting that exact cut.  that...didn't go well.  heh.  ooh, i'll have to dig up a picture of that.  haha, she'll kill me.

anyway, so the stylist got to work measuring, sectioning, and rubber banding all the way around her head and then started snipping away.  oh man, my kid was so excited.

after doing a little cleanup and evening out the ends and all that fun stuff, she braided the sides so that the hair would be out of the way for the bean's tennis lesson later in the day.  voila:

i think she liked it.  and she was amazed at how much hair had been cut off of her nugget.  hell, we both were.

the old lady wasn't quite as thrilled as she was - probably experiencing the same flashbacks i did, but in a different way - but even she had to smile at how excited her sister was over her new 'do.  and the next morning, she asked me to use my instyler to smooth it all out so that she could debut it at school looking its best.

nothing like a fresh new style to show off at school, eh?  gotta love it.

c-hair-ity

a while ago, my friend nanette finally took her adorable daughter em to have her hair cut.  because em's mane was gorgeous, curly and really long, i was completely thrown for a loop when nanette posted an "after" picture, revealing a new 'do that sat right at em's shoulders.  it was super cute, and i loved it.  when i showed the picture to the bean, this was her reaction:

she's been pretty attached to her hair, and always turned down my offer to take her for a haircut:  "no mommy, i want to keep it long.  like rapunzel!"  but then i told her the same thing that nanette had said to em - that we could send the cut-off hair to a place that would use it to help sick kids who lost their hair to the medicine that they needed to make them better.  her eyes lit up at the notion, and immediately changed her answer to "yes, mommy, can we do it right now?"

that's my girl.

except that i had to put her off for a few weeks.  with the recital coming up, we needed to keep her hair long enough to slick back into that high ballerina's bun.  but i promised to take her for a visit to the local kids' salon as soon as the show was over.

so, um, yeah - she took that quite literally.  because after we changed her out of that tutu, that was our very next stop.  she was pretty excited.

after she chose an animal to sit on, i took that bun down and marveled at how long her hair had gotten.

i explained to the stylist that we wanted to donate the hair, and she busted out a ruler to measure out the length that we needed to cut.  the bean and i had discussed how short she wanted to go, and while she initially went a little nuts and pointed to her chin, i talked her off that ledge real quick.  i mean, sure - it's just hair, right?  it'll grow back, and hers will at an alarming rate.  but still, i didn't want to get too crazy with it. pantene requires a minimum of 8 inches, so we went with 9.

the stylist told us that although most of the places that accept hair donations suggest to put it into a ponytail and cut it in one shot, she was more concerned with the remaining 'do being cut properly and ending up nice and straight.  so she did it in sections.  i totally held my breath when she made that first snip.  ain't no turning back now.

as she made her way around the bean's head, she'd put the snippets down and i'd secure bunches of it with colorful elastics.

look at the difference!  holy crap.

i kind of wanted to cry a little, but one look at that beaming little face and i realized it was a good thing that she was truly excited about.

a little twisting on either side, a cute little bow in the back, and she was all done.

in the car, she checked out the envelope that held her precious locks.  i was amazed at how hefty that little bundle was.  no wonder she was excited - all of a sudden her head must've felt so much lighter.

and then a couple of days later, i put it all into a ziploc per the instructions and then placed it into a bubble envelope to mail off to pantene.

while i love her new 'do (as does she) and think it looks awesome on her, i'm pretty much bursting with pride at how easily she changed her mind once she learned that such a simple act could possibly make an impact with people who needed help.  this kid's got such a good heart and a generous soul, and sometimes i wonder how i got so lucky.  i'm going to do all i can to ensure that the kindness that comes so naturally to her sticks around and grows along with her.

brows, blowout, beautiful!

my poor teen - she caught a cold last week that turned into a sinus infection.  she's now on antibiotics for the next ten days.  she missed two days of school, and when i picked her up yesterday i had a little "hope you feel better and didn't have a shitty day at school" present for her:

and it was awesome when she got in the car, grumpy from her last class, and totally brightened up when she found her little surprise. 

i still had something else for her - a trip to the salon to get our brows done.  we'd both been bitching and moaning about how badly we needed it, and i thought it would be nice to pull up without a word.  we were munching on a snack when i parked, and as we sat there chatting, i saw a flash of movement just outside her window. 

"OMG, dude, that chick totally ate it just now," i sniggled as she whipped her head around to look.  but her interest didn't go unnoticed as the girl noticed and screamed out "what the FUCK are you looking at?!?"  yikes.  and i was most amused because she was so obviously twisted - at 3:30 in the afternoon - and as she fell, held her cup in such a way that not a single drop of whatever poison was in it came splashing out.

as she stumbled away in her drunken stupor, the humor of the situation hit me and i burst out laughing and snorting uncontrollably.  damn.

but the joke was on me, because the first thing we laid eyes on as we set foot inside the salon was her dumb ass, sitting on a chair, mumbling incoherently as a couple of salon employees helped clean her cuts and cover them with band-aids.  i just hoped she didn't recognize the teen and say something to her that would make me have to pull my inner bitch out and get my ass beat.  heh.

luck was on our side, as she hardly took notice of us and continued to ramble on and on about how she'd fallen in the parking lot but her nails were a mess and she really needed a pedicure.  and when she heard us ask for our services, she decided to add an eyebrow wax to her list of needs. 

except that they didn't really want to work on her drunk ass with bloody feet and told her that she should go home, take a nap, and come back the next day.  when she finally figured out what they were telling her, she got crazy belligerent and started spouting off all sorts of obscenities.  "don't any of you speak english?"  "i pay you people good money, you do what i tell you!"  and other loveliness.  i personally would have thrown her ass out, but they decided to shut her up by sitting her down in one of the spa chairs and doing their thing. 

you KNOW i had to.

damn, she totally busted me.  i was trying to be so stealth, too.  i don't know that she realized what i was doing though, because she didn't say a word to me.  instead, she continued to ramble on and on about how she couldn't understand anything they were saying, demanded translations, whined about the water temperature, and so on and so on.

when we were finally done, it was time to scoop up the bean and take her for some beautifying too.  her hair had gotten really long from the last time she'd had it cut, and it was time to chop it again.

we'd been talking about going for her haircut for a few days, so she wasn't freaked out by it this time.  she still wanted to sit on my lap, though.  no biggie.

snip, snip.

she even got her first "blowout."

and then she was all done.

cute, yes?  oh, and speaking of cute - behold, the teen's official sophomore portrait!

man, i've got me some super fabulous girls.

hairography

so we tried to take the bean for a haircut a couple of weeks ago, but it ended in disaster. she'd just woken up from a nap and absolutely refused to sit down on one of the fun animals at the specialty kids' cut place we've taken her to before.

not to mention, there's an episode of "the upside-down show" (which she loves) called "barbershop," and for some reason, she's terrified of it. so you mention "haircut" and she's already shaking her head and walking away from you.

but today, i'd timed it well - she's at her best pre-noon - and i MIGHT have bribed enticed her with the promise of a lollipop. um, and maybe some ice cream, too. so when we arrived here:

she was feeling pretty saucy and ready to go. the before (you'll note that head-tilt in quite a few more pictures, i don't know where she gets it):

she decided to turn the tables on her mommy like her sister had done before:

i'd also promised her that she could sit in my lap while her hairs were getting cut. the stylist was really nice, remembered us from the meltdown the week before, and was more than happy to drape a cape around both of us as she got to work. a basket full of toys to play with helped distract her, too, and in no time we got up to find this on the floor:

she happily posed for me (blogger is being a pain, i don't know what's up with this freaky formatting):

and picked up her camera again.

gave me her fabulous frown:

collected her rewards:

and then played for a while with the zillion toys in the waiting area.

she liked this vacuum then and now.

i was pleased at the successful trip, and the hub and the teen both loved the new cut. yay!

later, for dinner, i decided to test out a different recipe for homemade flour tortillas. the ingredients were pretty similar, but the process was a little different - allowing the dough to "rest" a couple of times before cooking. this was obviously the key, as i ended up with much less sticky stuff to work with this time.

and it was much easier to roll out, too. still not perfect circles, but i like to think that the imperfection of homemade goodies adds to its charm. heh.

this recipe's definitely a keeper.