THE haircut

Last summer, Samuel got his hair "buzzed". As in a buzz cut. As in very, very short. He'd never had one before & thought it sounded cool. When school started, he took a hat to school to wear at recess to keep from having a sunburned head, but he said it hurt because his hair was so short that the hat rubbed a little.

And so began the quest to grow it out & have "shaggy" hair.

We went to the hair place we use a few times over the school year to get it cleaned up a bit & trimmed, but we never cut it. Every time one of us suggested it, Samuel was firm that he didn't want to lose any length. Since every other boy in creation seems to have longer, shaggy hair at the moment (at least where we live anyway), we let him grow it out. I've always SAID that my rule was "As long as it's not in their eyes & it's clean, I'm ok with it." But living that with a child whose hair was looking pretty scruffy was a whole different story. And for my poor husband, who has never reached a point of NEEDING a hair cut in his life (he always gets it cut before it reaches that point), it has driven us crazy.

As we've watched his hair get longer and as he's perfected the Justin Bieber-esque "flip" to get his bangs out of his eyes, Larry & I have reminisced about some of the well, STUPID fashions & trends we experienced as kids. Ahem....the mullet, the mile-high bangs, hair so stiff with Aqua Net that it didn't move when the tornado-strength winds blew, pegged pants legs, scrunched multi-color socks, neon colors & so much more....and somehow we survived all that and came out looking at least somewhat normal as adults. We decided we'd ride out this phase as best we could.

But we have our limits.

We told Samuel early this summer that he could have his long hair through the summer, but before school began again, it was coming off! About a month ago, I checked my calendar & discovered that today, August 12th, would be my last full day at home with the kids before school starts, so I alerted him that today would be the day of the haircut. He marked it on his calendar & teasingly shouted "nooooooooooooooooo" every time we mentioned it. He knew it was coming, though, so he relished these past couple of months with all his hair-flipping & ponytail creating. Amidst jokes from friends & family ("Did you lose your scissors? I can loan you a pair." and "I didn't know you had three daughters."), he's stuck to his guns that he wanted long hair.

This morning, before the big haircut we took some "before" pictures.





And then we headed to the hair place. We had told him he could keep it a little longer on top, but the back needed to come up off his collar & the part that has hung over his ears would be cut shorter. He looked through Savannah's new yearbook & found a picture of a boy with hair that seemed to fit that. We meant to take the picture with us, but forgot it. We had to just tell the stylist what we wanted & she cut it according to our description. This was the result.



When we left the salon, he was mortified. He hated his hair & was embarrassed to show his face (hair, really) in the grocery store where we went afterward. I told him to just hold off on hating it. I asked him to give it a few hours. It might 'grow on him' after all. But many, many hours later he was still upset about it & hated the way it had turned out. Knowing that we couldn't glue hair back on to make it long again, we pulled out my new People magazine & flipped through it to find a suitable Plan B haircut. He will never admit to it, but he found a picture of Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez and pointed to his hair & said "This is it!" It's the post-haircut version of Justin's hair, not the pre-haircut, bangs-flipping style. (I had to laugh that he kind of went from the old to the new version of Justin's hair today.....he hates Justin Bieber!)

(Before)(After)

So back to the stylist we went. Fortunately, another lady who was working this morning remembered that we'd been there already & offered to "fix it" for us for free. She's cut my hair a million times so I knew she was good and could help! Afterward, I pulled out my phone to take a picture to text to Larry and got these. He's happy, which makes me happy, and his hair is short! Hallelujah! No more shaggy boy at my house!


Disclaimer: Don't get me wrong. Some guys look great with long hair. I really do like it on many celebrities. I just don't like it on my son.