Snip it, snip it good

I don't know how or why I think this, but I must have heard somewhere along the way that it is bad luck to cut a baby's hair before they turn one. You probably don't recall, but we buzzed all of Ashton's hair off somewhere around four months because his scalp looked like a tortoise shell with a few straggly strands growing out of it. His cradle cap was so hard to manage and he was in that in-between stage where his newborn hair was falling out but nothing was replacing it and oh it was just awful looking. At the time, Ashton clearly agreed.

But a couple of weeks ago, right before Labor Day, we went for a proper haircut. There's a place called SnipIts that is solely for children and they have pictures of the salons on their website. Colorful, bright, you can just hear the chaos. And sure enough, when I called for an appointment, the girl could barely speak over the music, screaming and shrieking in the background. You know that scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when they walk in to that huge room with the chocolate river where everything is edible and the Oompa Loompa's are singing that cultish, creepy song? That's what I pictured. No way were we going there. If it would have been stimulus overload for me, surely Ashton would have positively exploded the minute we walked through the door. Bam!!

Not in the mood to pick up his pieces, I called a place in Belmont called Robert's Salon. I think Robert  is a nice name and they said they did baby haircuts. Good enough for me. I trotted in with Ashton and, thinking of the blog, took a lovely picture to document this big first.

Well. What you won't see is Ashton's complete and utter FREAK OUT. He totally panicked and despite books, Mickey on my iPhone, snacks, songs, magazines, pictures, anything, the minute those scissors got near his head he was scared to death. He cried the whole time. We are talking head back, top of his lungs, tears-the-size-of-Texas crying. Pretty sure we broke the sound barrier at one point. Everyone was so frenzied trying to calm him down that of course they made it worse. Finally, mercy: we gave him his own comb, he sat in my lap, and I held a bottle in his mouth like I have never held on to anything before.

I mentioned at one point that my husband had a vested interest in the kind of "hair style" that Ashton was going to come out with. A faux-hawk? Short all over? And we laughed together, oh how we laughed. This kid was getting whatever haircut the stylist could manage between all the flailing arms, milk burps, and miscellaneous whines. She did a dry cut and yes, it was a little choppy in the front and she missed a part behind his ear, but if I had had a Medal of Valor on me (I must start carrying those) I would have given it to her. A screaming, wriggling toddler can be terrifying but she stayed the course and eventually he was forced to retreat.

Ashton and I went across the street and I bought him a consolation bagel, cream cheese and all (which I later paid for, stickiness-wise. Biiiiig price tag on that one).

Then we went home and he took a nice long nap. But because no beauty story is complete without the before and after, behold:

I texted Jason that we were home from the haircut and he immediately asked three questions.

1) What kind of hair style did he get? (Answer: laughter. As if.)
2) Did you save any of the hair? (Answer: No (more laughter). I'm lucky to have survived you moron!)
3) You gave him a bagel with cream cheese?! ARE YOU INSANE?!

And that's the story of Ashton's first haircut.