I never thought the day would come. I never thought I'd see this childhood ritual / right of passage ever hit anywhere near my home or within a 100 mile radius....but it did.
The day after our belt test. The one day I had no coping skills and absolutely hands down no patience what so ever...out of pure exhaustion from karate testing the day before....my dear, loving, creative and curious daughter, Mia, took a pair of scissors in her hand and cut her hair!
Now. Before I get ahead of myself - I have to tell you what happened before I found out that she did this. I was sitting in the computer room sometime between the 2 conference sessions (Sunday Semi-Annual General Conference that we can watch at home as it is broadcast all over the world)....when she came in all excited and said "Mommy - look - I grew bangs". And I said - "no sweetie - that's just whispies because your hair is growing back in because you are always twisting your hair and pulling it out". With that said, she turned around and left the room. Nothing looked awry or wrong - so I thought nothing of it.
Not that much later - I had to go upstairs to get something. I happened to notice that Travis had put a red hat on the stairs that caught my eyes (it needed to go up in my craft room). It was covered with some hair though. I thought that was strange - but still was not connecting the dots. So this is when I played a CSI detective and studied the hair. I noticed: 1) the hair was not kinked - as it normally would be if it had been pulled out with a hair rubber band. 2) the hair had no scalp plugs or follicles...and 3)it was ALOT of hair to be considered normal!
Finally the light blub went off. It was more like a flashing siren. This hair didn't fall out...it was cut! Oh my word - are you serious!!!!???? So I looked to both of my girls with the hair in my fingertips and said "who CUT their HAIR???". Mia very carefully pointed to herself. Not to her chest - she kept her hand down and pointed to her leg. Not wanting to point to herself I guess or make it so noticeable? And that was the very moment I put the pieces of the puzzle together! She cut her hair. She came in to tell me what she had done ,but she didn't "grow bangs" she cut them! I still didn't notice a huge chunk and thought all was ok...notice here I said "thought".
She began to throw yet another tantrum that day and because of that I threatened to take all of her stuff away - all of her belongings on her dresser - all her toys in her room. Everything. That's when I found the mother load! She didn't just cut the hair I found on the stairs. She cut 3 large chunks. All different lengths and left them on her dresser because "she wanted to keep them".
Later on she was playing with her hair and playing with the one chunk that was now beaming light in a darkened sky when I told her that we'd have to get her hair fixed this week. She began fussing and whining that she didn't want her hair short...that she loved her hair...and that she wanted it to stay long because she loved it long.
After 30 miserable minutes and my patience gone, I put her hair in pigtails myself and cut them off. I just couldn't take the whining and freaking out any longer. All I thought of - was if I do it now - I won't have to listen to this for another 30 minutes or another day since it will already be done. SO I did it! Within minutes - the crying and fussing stopped and she was all happy go lucky with short hair. I think she was pulling some reverse psychology on me since she's been begging for short hair because many of her friends at school have short hair! I mean - really - does she look so miserable with short hair???
The next day she went to school and right after pick up time, I took her to a "boring place" to get her hair fixed. It would be a privilege to get it cut at snip-its...so I couldn't take her there. I still have a hard time finding her on the playground or in the classroom quickly. But I must admit it does look cute! We have the 2 ponytails in a bag ready to be sent off to Locks of Love. Too bad it was cut here in this case out of everything but love! More like Locks of Frustration! Better luck next time! No scissors for 1 month! Now if only those teeth will start coming out before she takes a hammer to them!
