Friday, March 11, 2016

The New Recruits

There are some things that I have given up on after having a third kid. Any hope of going anywhere without at least one child in attendance, for one thing. Normal haircuts, for another. Although that last one has taken a turn for the rather alarming.

I shall explain.

When Cubby was young, I would bring him to an actual salon (albeit a Country Salon with a deer head on the wall) to get his hair cut whenever A. went. This was feasible because I only had one kid and the Country Salon only charged five bucks to cut Cubby's hair.

Then I had another kid. And then this kid started to have a lot of hair. Getting two kids to any kind of salon became kind of a hassle, as well as kind of expensive, so I would mostly cut their hair myself, despite having no experience or skill whatsoever. Every four months or so I would bring them both to a professional to fix my mistakes.

It was at this point that A. started suggesting that he could just give them buzzcuts with his beard trimmer. I adamantly refused this suggestion, because I don't really like the way buzzcuts on little boys look.


I mean, look at the cuteness of those little heads of hair. JUST LOOK.


Then I had a third kid. He doesn't yet have enough hair to worry about really, but getting three kids to a salon for a haircut with any kid of regularity was just . . . no.

I have some problems, though. One of them is that I am really not good at cutting their hair. Another is their hair is very thick and grows very fast, especially Cubby's, so they need a haircut every four weeks without fail. And the third problem is that I do not like long hair on males of any age. So if I wasn't willing to cut it myself, pay for someone else to cut it, or let their hair grow . . .

I surrendered to the beard trimmer. And A. has been shaving their heads regularly ever since.

But then his beard trimmer died, probably because it wasn't really meant for shaving whole heads of hair with any regularity, so A. bought actual electric hair clippers. He used them for the first time last night, putting on the number zero guard* first and starting with Cubby. He took the first swipe right above Cubby's ear and said, "Oops."

The number zero guard is pretty much the "bald" guard. Super.

Because he didn't actually want Cubby to be completely bald, he then did the rest of the bottom part of Cubby's head with that guard, using a longer guard for the top and then attempting to sort of fade the two together with an intermediate-length guard.

And then, so Cubby wouldn't be too upset about his, um, extreme haircut, he did Charlie's hair the same way.


This is Charlie's response to a request for a smile. Yikes.


DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY, PLEBE.

It's . . . well, it's not the look I would have chosen for my sons.

I trimmed Jack's hair for him a few days ago, but he has so far escaped the clippers.


Looks like a damn hippie next to his brothers now, though.

At least we won't have to worry about cutting it again for awhile. I guess.

* The guards are the interchangeable heads for the clippers that determine how short the resulting haircut is. They start at zero for the shortest (i.e., BALD) and go up from there.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beware! My husband regularly cuts his own hair with clippers. The front looks OK but the back often looks as if he ran into a buzz saw at an angle. Keep going for a professional correction periodically, something that I haven't been able to talk the husband into doing. Mary in MN

Anonymous said...

Have to confess, I much prefer the hair to the prisoner-of-war look. MIL

tu mere mere said...

Too bad A. didn't ask for advice from the expert (that would be me). Those clippers are great, but I don't believe there is anyone who hasn't inadvertently used the "bald" number and had to try and somehow recover from the mistake. I did on your dad before he went on alert, thank god. You really did a good job on Jack. So cute.

Phoo-D said...

At least it will make it easy to check for ticks this summer! �� A friend with two boys did this after one came down with a Lyme tick bite. It worked well for the summer!

Daisy said...

My boy who is now a young man has been getting "half inch buzz cuts" since he was 4. When it grows out even a little, it's cowlick city. And since he's blind, keeping it short-short is a great step in making self-care easier. I don't think he even owns a comb or brush - except for the one that brushes the pet rabbit.