haircuts for us both

Grandma Julie and Bracken out to lunch before Bracken’s haircut.

Yep, that’s right, Bracken had his very first “professional” haircut today!

This morning my mom trimmed my hair. Bless her. I had been in need of a trim for a long time. Jeff didn’t feel confident in cutting in a straight line and I didn’t blame him. So I waited for my mom’s visit. I was getting rather grouchy every time I needed to brush my hair because it was so tangly and difficult to brush through. Cutting of the ends made it feel so much lighter and brushing through it was so much easier! It felt wonderful. Since we were in hair trimming mode, my mom held Bracken while I worked on trimming his up a bit. With every quick turn of his head, I’d say “oops” and continue on trying to even things out. His hair grows so fast. I wanted to trim his bangs to keep them from getting in his eyes and decided to trim up the back too. My mom saw how challenging it was to trim an active two year old’s hair who keeps moving around and asked me if I’d like to go to town and get a haircut. So I said sure, let’s go.

To be honest, I’ve felt self conscious about cutting Bracken’s hair myself. I can trim hair, no problem. But I have felt pretty clueless about what to do beyond that. I thought I was doing an alright job with his hair, but then we had some incidents right after I’d cut his hair where people would make not-very-nice comments and asking if I had done it myself, and once someone even laughed at his haircut! I felt very self conscious after that and was afraid of doing a bad job because I didn’t want Bracken to get laughed at and feel bad about his hair. It made me not so confident when I went to cut it each time. And I felt extra sensitive about people’s comments about his hair. When people said “did you just give him a haircut?” and then go completely silent after I said yes, I’d get uncomfortable wondering why they asked and why they were now silent. So when my mom offered to go get his hair cut in town I realized it sounded nice and I felt a little relieved to not have the weight on my shoulders that his haircut turn out good. Writing this all out now I feel a little silly, but I realize I just needed a little help.

We went to the only salon I knew of in town (I know there are many more, I’ve just never paid attention to look for them before) and asked if they cut children’s hair. I don’t think they did it very regularly, but a man there said he would and that he could do it in about 45 minutes from then. We had just enough time to get a bite to eat (some seafood, yum!) before we headed back for Bracken’s first haircut.

At lunch, before the haircut.

After the haircut!

The man who cut Bracken’s hair did such a great job (and said Bracken’s hair, being so straight and fine, doesn’t hide little “bloopers” like other kinds of hair do, which made me feel better knowing that.) Bracken sat very still for him and was absolutely wonderful. He did so well for his first haircut in a salon!

And what a cutie pie! He looked so handsome. And so adorable and precious at the same time that I just kept looking at him (and wanted to hug him and kiss him and snuggle him nonstop, of course.)