Very First Hair Cuts

I've been wondering if anyone would notice and sure enough my good friend from over at Mayhem and Magic (click here) did! She left a comment on my post from earlier today asking about the boys' hair. Yes, indeed, they got their very first hair cuts! I trimmed their dreds. This was a long time coming, the decision had been weighing on me for months (literally!), and it was a big thing for me to finally determine to do it. The boys' locs were getting very long, especially for 3-year-old-rough-and-tumble-boys who really couldn't care less if grass/sand/mud/play dough/cookie dough/jelly/glue/glitter/gum/or slime of any variety gets smeared in their hair. Their locs were so long that we could put both of their hair into full ponytails. We were also letting them wear my headbands sometimes (which they liked, to keep their locs out of their faces). These looks (ponytails, headbands, etc.) were very hip and cool (the boys looked like some of my coolest students do), but not so appropriate for 3 year old boys in our neck of the woods. Their locs were getting very long, and very heavy. And, the real kicker was that Kyle's hair was driving him absolutely batty. The locs in front were growing straight down, no matter what tactics I took to keep them twisted back. And they were hanging straight into his eyes. A bazillion times a day the poor kid was pushing his hair out of his eyes with his hands. It was distracting him from his playing, from his eating, from his craft projects, from everything. Just watching him go through this was killing me. Kyle's annoyance at his locs-in-his-eyes slowly came to outweigh the idea of keeping the locs long because of my own emotional attachment to the idea/symbolism of it. That is what finally pushed me over the edge and made me make the decision to trim. It was an emotional decision for me. Their hair had never been cut. Never ever. I loved it so much that the tips of their locs were their baby hair; their hair from Haiti, from the orphanage. I loved it so much that the end portions of their locs were from when they first came home, the middle portions were their hair from when they were settling-in-with-us, the roots were now, etc., etc., etc. I loved the symbolism. I loved what it represented. And if they were girls and I could do up-do's everyday, or boys who cared more about keeping junk out of their hair, or people who placed any value whatsoever on the length of their locs... well... then I suppose it would have been a different story. But this is Kyle and Owen we're talking about. Finally I bit the bullet. And once I made the decision, that was it. I said, "O.k., boys, Mama is going to cut your hair!! Just a little, you'll still have your dreadlocks, but I'm going to cut them shorter just a little bit!!" and they jumped right up into the chair I had set up in the kitchen. I made a huge production about how "ONLY MAMA CUTS THEIR HAIR! No one else! And definitely not each other-- NO CUTTING YOUR OWN DREADLOCKS!!!!!!!!!" (still, the next morning I caught them right in the nick of time -- both holding scissors in the playroom and about to "cut hair!"). Anyway, the momentous date was Friday, November 23; that was the date of the boys' very first hair cuts. Braydon and I are sooooo glad we finally did it. Their hair looks awesome now and so healthy. And the boys are much, much happier with their hair now.