will WE play in Peoria?

Kaitlyn loves going to the hairdresser and getting her hair cut. She really needed one before we went to Switzerland… and given that that was a few weeks ago… she really really needed one now. So today after school, we went.

The hairdresser started by washing Kaitlyn’s hair. She’s done it before, but this time decided that Kaitlyn didn’t quite reach the bowl well enough, so she just wet it down. Then, she tried to comb it. Kaitlyn’s hair is something of, well, a mess. You brush it, she moves, it gets tangled and knotted. More often than not, you brush it, she hollers and screams, so I give up. Well, this woman couldn’t give up. She had to get those knots out to cut it. Kaitlyn was in tears. The woman told me “Elle va me deteste.” (She’s going to hate me. I told her “oh, no” but I was thinking “heck, yea!”) Finally after a bucket of tears, a bottle of de-tangling goop and a lot of “ooh la la’s”… she was ready to cut.

Normally, I do not let Kaitlyn determine how long or short her hair will be. This time, she’s been pestering me relentlessly about it. So I let her pick. Sort of. She held her hand up above her ear. I put mine just below her earlobe and told the woman “comme ca.” (You don’t need to speak a lot of French to manage getting a haircut here, although speaking more French might improve the result, I suppose.)

The scissors started cutting and big chunks of hair started falling on the floor. It made me sad. Sure, it’s hair that’s all tangled and impossible to deal with. But it was the last wisps of Kaitlyn’s blond. The woman struggled to get the two sides of Kaitlyn’s hair even and little snips here and there meant when she was done you could see Kaitlyn’s earlobes sticking out below her hair. Her earlobes!

She is so thrilled with it. She just keeps looking at herself in the mirror and smiling. She’s even brushing her hair. I didn’t tell Bill. Kaitlyn wants it to be a surprise when we see him next week. Boy, is he going to be surprised.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.