Bow Holder

Whenever R says she wants something, often our first reaction is to see if we can make it or something like it ourselves. R has really picked up on this, and will often try to make things herself on her own initiative. She knows where to find her scissors and how to open the secretary in our living room that has tape and other craft things in it.

One day we walked into her bedroom and found that she had made herself two new bow holders for all of her bows--they don't quite all fit on her bow holder that my mom's good friend JH made for her and that she loves to display from her vanity drawer handles (see bottom pic below). So she made her own!

 

Is this Even the Same Child?

Before:

After:

Before and After

Before:
After:

Fun with R's Hair

We started with some braids
but she really wanted "buns" so this was the final product!

Shaggy to Smooth

I finally got my hair cut today. For those who have seen me in the last few weeks, it really hasn't been pretty. When random people comment on the length of your bangs, you know you've got an issue on your hands. So when my mother-in-law encouraged me -- not once, but several times -- I decided to get the hint and try to get an impromptu walk-in hair cut at the place I've been going to the last few years (it's a definite step-up from SuperCuts, GreatClips, or the HairCuttery, all places where I've gotten my hair cut less-than-satisfactorily numerous times over the years).

Before:
After:
ETA: When I told J I'd put this post up, he looked at it and commented, "You really changed your look! Are you a secret agent or something?"

A Bow Update

Remember this? Or this? And this?

R used to never let me put bows in her hair. Now, she will even ask for them herself on occasion, although she almost always demands that SHE be the one to choose the colors she wears. Regardless, I love it when she does let me decorate her hair. I think she's the cutest thing ever.

Here, she has THREE pigtails. Or maybe they're monkeytails, I can't remember. It's a different animal every time.

Pigtails

First Pigtails

Today was kind of a rough day with R. She's got a cold and it's making her really irritable. We've had some major tantrums, particularly around nap time (tantrums that are exacerbated by the fact that she's absolutely, definitely, tired). She threw a mondo fit this afternoon before her nap, and woke up exceedingly cranky. The only way to appease her was to feed her some of my mom's raisin bran muffins (really, they were for ME, but I sacrificed them to R) and to let her sit on my lap. The merest hint of anything else (yogurt as snack, sitting in her high chair, facing the wrong direction, having a hair out of place) set off another screaming fit.

She was a lot happier after she ate a muffin and started working on another ("More Muffin, Please. More Muffin Please. More Muffin PLEAAAAAAAAAAASE!") and finally I asked her if I could put pigtails in her hair since I'd just picked up some teeny-weeny hair ties. She graciously agreed and voila, her first (done by me) pigtails.

Sorry her hair is greasy (she was due for a wash, plus she'd gotten a little sweaty during her nap) and the pigtails aren't even, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances.

The other (relatively recent) development is that when you ask her to smile, she does what we call the "Beast" (from Beauty and the Beast) smile. This is that smile. And she has muffin all over her face. But. There you have them. Her first pigtails.

Rock On, Dudes

A post in which R channels Gene Simmons.

First Haircut

I finally got sick of R's mullet (no matter what anyone says, she did have a mullet, and it was not the cutest hairstyle once it got too long to curl up anymore) so we took her to Kids Kuts to get a real hair cut.

The stylist was great. Funniest thing-- after the hair cut, we're standing around putting coats on, and R grabs the stylist's hand and walks over to the little toy area and starts playing with her. J and I just looked at each other and back at R and the stylist a few times.

R loved the toy area and we let her play for about 15 minutes. The salon was empty so we chatted with the two stylists for a bit and then headed out.

Bows galore

R still doesn't let us put bows in her hair for long. We have a bunch of them sitting on a bookshelf in our dining room because I try to put them on in her bedroom and she leaves them in until we get downstairs and then pulls them out. Once she gets wind that there's a bow in her hair she can't stop trying to pull it out.

Anyway, Grammie and Grampie had some fun when they were visiting in the middle of last month putting all these bows in her hair simultaneously. Of course, it didn't last, but the pictures are great anyway.
(By the way, excuse her extreme bed-head in the second picture).

We're still working on them staying in...

and I think she's getting better at not pulling them out right away. (and I need to get my bangs cut.)

She kept it on...

...for about 10 minutes!

It's a game!

You may have noticed that R doesn't wear a lot of hair clips. This is not because we don't have hair clips for her to wear. On the contrary, we've collected a whole mess of the cutest hair bows ever. My mom's awesome friend, Mrs. H., has made dozens of hair clips and sent them to R. We have them in all different colors and patterns, and I love the way they look on R!

So why don't we put them on her more often?

Witness the photographic evidence below:
It might surprise you to hear that she lets me put the bows on just fine. In taking that series of photos, I must have put that bow in her hair no less than five or six different times.

In fact, what you see in that last picture is her trying to hand me the bow so I can put it in her hair again, just for her to pull it out, again! She thinks it's a game, and it's totally fun! It's the game of, "Mama, put a hair bow in my hair so I can pull it out and hand it back to you!" It's also the game of, "Let's see if I can get this bow out before Mom can get pictures of me with a bow in my hair, other than ones like this one":Note, in particular, the rumpled sweater that I haven't bothered to try to straighten, in my haste to set her down and possibly get a photo before that hair bow is gone once again.