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.