Friday, November 6, 2009

First Haircut

Max achieved another milestone today-- he had his first haircut.  I tried putting it off as long as possible but when two people asked if Max was a girl, I knew the time had come.  My mom treated Max to a haircut at Cool Cuts for Kids and it was definately worth the price.  There was a fantastic play area for Max while he waited for his turn in with Nedra, his stylist.  After a rather lengthy wait, we picked a movie (Baby Einstein) for him to watch while he got his hair cut.  The movie only help his interest for a few minutes so Carl and I broke out our secret weapon: his bottle.  Max loves his bottle and becomes so engrossed with eating that he becomes positively docile.  The combination of Baby Einstein and a bottle acted like anesthesia and Max sat still for his entire haircut.  Plus, he seemed to really dig the steering wheel on his firetruck so that gave Nedra a few extra seconds to create the perfect coiffure.

She did a great job even though I was a little sad to see his long hair disappeat snip by snip.  His haircut just reminded me how quickly he is growing up and how much he changes from day to day.  While I absolutely love watching him learn and progress, I sometimes miss the tiny baby that liked to cuddle with me and couldn't turn over the garbage can in the blink of an eye.  I try my best to be fully present and enjoy every moment instead of wishing for something else but sometimes the most unexpected things tug at my heartstrings.  Motherhood, I have found out, is a complex mixture of emotions that has resulted in one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.  And today Max also happened to come away with a very stylish haircut.


As an aside, Cool Cuts gave us a "First Haircut Memory Kit" that included a lock of Max's hair.  I also have a spot for said lock in a his baby book.  I am feeling ambivilant about keeping his hair.  I don't have a lock of hair from my first haircut so the tradition seems a wee bit odd to me.  What do you say, fair reader?  Keep it or throw it away?  Please share your thoughts and feelings in the comments!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

my parents kept my hair in my baby book. It was neat for them because I started out strawberry blond, so when I was in high school (I think) I got them another lock of my hair to show how I'd grown over the years. They kept the hair in an envelope in my baby book so it wasn't like they had to constantly look at it.

Alisha Stamper said...

i don't know. someone gave me a thing to keep a little of wallace's hair, and i kept it, but i haven't done anything with it yet. I kinda feel like it is strange too.... especially when I see the nutty things pioneers used to do with hair... bracelets and such... kinda gross.

Sarah McK said...

It may be cute in a baby book, but no need to store it in two places. I gave Callum his first haircut a long time ago because his hair rubbed off everywhere but the top, so he had some weird long hair on top. I didn't think to save a lock of hair and my mother-in-law was appalled. :)

Maggie said...

What a great hair cut! I have kept both kids first haircut hairs, but they're both just in a little envelope in their file folder in storage. I figure someday it might be cool to see what they started out as. That is unless we keep moving a lot. Then I will probably end up throwing both envelopes away.

anorthowife said...

we never did any of the "memory book" stuff in my family, and honestly, that's not something i feel super jazzed about doing -- so if you dont want to worry about keeping it then dont! i mean, you've blogged about it, so there IS a record of when it happened AND you have photographic evidence. that sounds like plenty to me!