A Perfectly Good Haircut

After two years and seven months, Berit finally had long enough hair to require a trim. I was torn -- on one hand, I couldn't stand the scraggly, fine, stringy hair Berit had just one hour after I brushed it. But it was long! I had been waiting for my fancy, pretty little girl to emerge from the baby that everyone thought was a boy for so long. And even though she wouldn't dare let me braid it, and rarely let me put it in pigtails or a pony, there was always the knowledge that I could if I really wanted to. 

Anyway, I took her today and after much fuss on her part about getting her hair cut (she was opposed, surprise-surprise), she sat silently watching herself in the big mirror in awe and emerged with pretty much the same hair she went in with, but a little shorter, cleaned up, and altogether neater. Piece of cake.

I had asked my stylist to trim up those fine little pieces of hair that had broken off from ponytails and barrettes and had worked themselves into really long, ugly bangs, and she did trim them but not much. So I spent the whole day looking at them touching Berit's nose and get in her eyes and decided I could take matters into my own hands. When we got home tonight (family trip to Gaylord, where we let Trevor browse the four-wheeler store, went to Old Navy to choose a couple pairs of pants for the girls from their crazy-small selection for toddlers and have one of those dinners at Big Buck Brewery where you clean up the mess your kids made under the table yourself and leave a really big tip for the waiter) I plopped B on the counter, told her to look straight at Mommy and held the hair in my hands to cut it. Apparently I've never really explained the concept of "look straight" to Berit, and just as I was cutting she turned her head, and we ended up with inch-long, crooked bangs. I think they're kind of cute; Trevor is mortified. I had the same bangs in seventh grade, when my friend Monique and I cut our bangs in her bathroom, and I feel a little like it's a haircut rite-of-passage for girls. And frankly I'm just plain glad they're out of Berit's eyes. So here are her pictures, and yes, I did keep a crooked snippet of hair for her baby book. (Looking forward to when she's in kindergarten so I can actually start putting things IN her baby book, instead of BY it in the drawer. The situation is even worse for Marta's.)