Kids both got haircuts!

In other news

Skipper got new glasses and Duchess dyed her hair pinkish.















































Also, Duchess has a Boyfriend, who has come over for dinner at our house TWICE.

Cook has been enormously enjoying playing the role of Sitcom Dad, and actually asked Boyfriend "Well, are you going to be a doctor or a lawyer?" (Boyfriend, to his credit, said "I'm sixteen; I don't know what I'm going to do.")

First Day of Seventh Grade

Thank you, lice!

Duchess got a haircut!

catching a breath

We have been busy.

My work life has continued to be very busy. My job has been extended through the end of the calendar year.

Duchess is now fully healed from the Broken Finger Episode, and is cramming in a bunch of makeup gymnastics classes before the end of the season in June. This is hectic. She is also taking a programming class on Saturdays, which is hectic. And she's started extra training sessions on weekends with her kung fu friends, preparing for their Big Test this summer. Hectic!

Last weekend was Skipper's birthday. She had invited six kids to her party on Sunday, and we heard back from three, and she only had one confirmed attendee. She decided she wanted to go ahead with the party, even with just one kid. On Saturday night, after the kids had gone to bed, I asked Cook to inspect my itchy head for lice. I had a louse. Our first lice! On Sunday morning, we started the bedding-washing and kid-delousing project, and it rapidly became clear that we were not going to be able to get ready for the looming week, bake and frost a birthday cake, lay out a scavenger hunt, host guests, delouse* everybody AND still remain sane, so we cancelled the birthday party. I called the parent of the one confirmed attendee, and emailed the parents of the non-RSVP-ers  as I didn't have numbers for them. One of the non-RSVPers subsequently showed up for the party (which was confusing and hilarious and mortifying in equal measures - they knocked on the door, and Skipper, Duchess, and Cook, who were playing Uno in the living room between combings, all scattered in terror and surprise).

It all worked out okay. We seem to be louse-free, and my head no longer itches.***  And ALL six kids are coming to the rescheduled party this weekend, so it probably actually worked out for the best.

Skipper's birthday? I think it was pretty good. She got presents she liked, she ate her weight in sushi for dinner, and then she ate chocolate cake frosted with whipped cream and garnished with raspberries. Her favorite present seems to be Uno, a last-minute inspiration of Cook's. She feels old.

That's all. Hectic! Old!

*Manual delousing, using a spiffy anti-nit comb, a lot of conditioner and the magic of television.
** Skipper appears to have been the vector, which makes sense - I've heard from other parents that her class is particularly lousy. Cook was clean, and Duchess and I both had very small infestations.
*** The internet told me that the itch is the result of an allergic reaction to lice saliva. That made me feel much itchier.

I gave Duchess a haircut, too. And then I took some blurry photos.

I'm sure she'll enjoy chuckling over photos of this haircut in twenty years.

Skipper's hair has been driving me nuts for months. Her hair somehow is all oriented forward, so it wants to hang in her face, a tendency that she embraces for hiding purposes. I watched her at the mini-show her class did on the last day of school before break, and she turned her head slightly to the side so she could hide behind the screen of hair. It looked like a move she had practiced. 

For days now, I've been showing her pictures of girls and women with short haircuts, and yesterday I finally convinced her to let me chop it off. I bribed her with television during the chopping, and ice cream after. She's not terribly thrilled about the results, but she's been swayed by Duchess's proclamations of approval.* We may have trouble when she goes back to school and every single kid in her class tells her she looks like a boy, but I'm prepared. In the meantime, I'm delighted to be able to see her face, if not exactly delighted with my hair-cutting abilities. And while the haircut is pretty terrible,** there's something about it that nicely fits her personality. Skipper is a fairly puckish character; to me, long shiny princess hair isn't ever going to look quite right on her. I may have to take her to an actual hair-cutting expert to tidy it up, though.

It's peanut butter. I swear.

*Duchess, I'm pretty sure, is mostly just pleased that Skipper is out of the running to have longer hair than her - Skipper's hair is straighter than hers, and doesn't get hideously tangled at the drop of a hat, so Duchess was getting worried that Skipper would end up with the long, silky, straight hair that Duchess wishes she had.

** Putting the kibosh on my great business plan.

Haircuts, glasses, and genetics

Sometimes, it all falls into place.

Sometimes I feel like my life is perfect. Tonight, Cook took Dutch to soccer, leaving me and Skipper at home from 5 to 7:30. In theory, I could have prepared a nice meal, eaten it with Skipper while having pleasant bonding conversation, and put her to bed before Cook and Dutch got home. In practice, I decided to give her a haircut, put her in front of the laptop, and let her watch TV while I cut. This wasn't a great decision, and set us up for a delayed dinnertime, but it was great. At the moment, I truly couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing than hacking haphazardly at my kid's hair while she provided color commentary* for Danny McAskill movies.

Honestly, I was perfectly happy.

I had a lot of moments like that today. I moved wood chips around at Skipper's preschool for a while (working on fulfilling the "parent work hours" requirement), and enjoyed the vast and beautifully-managed garden filled with delightful things like amaranth, muskmelon, tomatillos, and some sort of "Andean tuber." I biked home with Skipper and a big package of toilet paper in the trailer, and it was sunny and beautiful, and Skipper was singing. I picked a lot of tomatoes. It was a nice day. I'm pretty lucky.

Anyway, this is Skipper's haircut. It's very lopsided - I love the left side (her left) so much that I can't bring myself to cut it shorter to match the terrible right side. She was watching "The Voice," which she thought was excruciatingly boring.

* "Wow! Mom, he's balancing on one wheel! Mom, I bet he had to practice a lot! Wow! I probably can't do that! Oh, he jumped!"

Haircuts!

Did you notice them? There have been haircuts. Skipper's was mostly about cutting out dried vomit, but Dutch's was a response to her request for a haircut "like Kit Kittredge's."

Ego booster

I got a haircut. I like it, though I haven't yet seen how it performs in real life. (The woman who cut my hair IRONED it. I don't even own a hair dryer, and my idea of serious grooming is to brush my hair before leaving the house.) When I got home, Dutch said "Mom, I can tell you cut your hair! You look like a mop."

Thanks.

The bus is a place where you can talk about death.

The scene: Dutch, Skipper, and I are riding home on the bus. Skipper is nursing and thus quiet.

Dutch: I told Teacher C and Teacher J that I'm going to get a short haircut.*
Me: Yeah? What'd they say?
D: They were excited.
M: Hm.
D: I don't think I look like a (Dutch) with long hair. I want to look more like a (Dutch.)
M: Oh.
D: I want to look more like I did when I was a tiny baby.
Me: You want to be bald? Or do you want a mullet?
D: No. I just... I'll never be a tiny baby again.
M: No.
D: And soon I'll be...
M: ...a grownup?
D: ... some dirt.
M: Um. Yes. After a long while. But you'll be very special dirt.
D: Mom! You only think I'll be special dirt because I'm YOURS.
M: Maybe.
D: Mom! Anna has beads that she says are magic! Tomorrow I will ask her if they can make you live forever, and if they do, I will give one to each of you!
M: Great, thanks!

*Dutch and I have back-to-back PROFESSIONAL haircut appointments scheduled for next weekend. I'm holding my breath that she'll actually go through with a short haircut...

Maintenance

So I bet you've been burning to know how our "no 'poo" experiment is going... here's your answer. I'd post photos, but the camera is still broken, so you'll have to take my word on it that after 23 days with no shampoo or conditioner (baking soda and vinegar only), Dutch's hair looks fine, and Cook's hair looks fine (and his scalp is much happier). Dutch's hair, in my opinion, has a richer color now than it did before, and a little more wave, but that's pretty speculative. What I can say for sure is that their hair looks/feels/smells totally normal, not greasy at all, and they never had a greasy stage. We've actually been oiling Skipper's head after baths, because her scalp was so dry, and after an initially greasy period of a few hours (during which we style her hair into an excellent fauxhawk), it looks totally normal (presumably after the oil soaks into her bedding and our shirts and whatnot). I'm still not ready to go for it, but I've been reducing the amount of shampoo I use, and concentrating on really rubbing it on my scalp rather than lathering all the hair, and though my hair doesn't feel "clean"* when I finish the wash in the shower, it feels and looks totally fine afterward.

That's the exciting news. I promise not to write about this again for at least three months.

*You know - squeaky.

days of our lives

More videos, showing nothing particularly interesting except the extremely messy living room/Dutch's bedroom.

This morning, Skipper ate some pear for breakfast, then crept all around the kitchen, pausing only to pull things off shelves, fondle electrical outlets, and occasionally lick the floor. She's officially entered the Get Into Everything And Drive Your Sister Nuts stage.

Bangs

Dutch has bangs now, too. She LOOOOOVES them, even though they don't quite look like the bangs in the Barbie coloring book. You can't tell in the video, but I actually did a pretty decent job on them, in my opinion.

This is Sleepy Dutch, five minutes later.



Also, I want you all to know that I signed Dutch up for acting classes, starting in January. If the kid's going to wring every drop of drama out of every situation, she might as well do it officially.

Haircut time

I did it AGAIN! I cut my hair. It gets worse; I cut BANGS!!! I haven't had bangs* since I was maybe nine, I think. The reason I haven't had bangs since I was maybe nine is because they don't look very good on me. Fat round-faced people with very strong chins generally avoid bangs. There is a reason for this.

But, see, everybody has bangs. Bangs are hip! All the cool (white) kids have bangs! I've been harassing Dutch for weeks, trying to convince her that it'd be okay to get bangs, since it's driving me crazy that her hair hangs limply in her face all the time, dragging in her food and generally just looking awful,** and somewhere along the way I decided I should get bangs, too.***

I'm home sick today. Actually, I'm home feeling crappy and doing data entry and statistical analysis (two things I don't like to do and am not very good at), for work. And I have too much to do, and am exhausted and cranky and out of control, so... now I have bangs. I bet you wish our camera's memory card hadn't died.


*that were shorter than the rest of my hair, if you see what I've mean - I've given myself terrible short haircuts in the past, but this is different, since it's bangs with longer hair.
** "I just want to be able to see your pretty face!" - a refrain uttered by mothers of daughters for as long as humans have had the leisure to think about things beyond the next meal.
*** Dutch, in case you're wondering, is on board for the bangs now, since she found a character in the Barbie coloring book who has bangs. They're so pretty! I'm planning to cut her bangs this weekend - mine were just for practice.

No news is good news, I guess.

I spent some time last night writing a great blog post in my head. It was great! It was witty and pithy and stuff. I've totally forgotten it, and no amount of staring at the screen will bring it back, apparently.

Anyway, I just cut my hair. Skipper keeps pulling it, and I hated the length it was at. I have super-fine hair,* and when it gets long, it gets really flat and nasty and I look like a balding hippie of the unsavory, unwashed, unphotogenic variety. Now it's shorter, and I feel lighter of heart, even though now I look like an unsavory hippie whose hair has been gnawed by rats. I always cut my hair when I'm feeling a little insane, which I am definitely feeling at the moment.

In the non-insane news, Dutch just began her last session of swim lessons, at the glorious Otter level. This means that summer is winding down. The kids start daycare at the end of September, and I am trying to write a letter, as requested by Skipper's teachers-to-be, describing her. It's pretty hard, trying to describe a 4-month-old child's personality. Cook was stumped when I told him about the assignment. "Um... she's kind of squeaky? She eats? And sleeps? And... poops?" I find myself writing things like "she really enjoys kicking her legs," which is just pointless, as I'm pretty sure that they weren't planning to bind her legs or anything. The letter will also be seriously outdated by the time she gets to daycare - she'll have lived 25% longer, and will be different in most ways. Maybe leg-kicking will go the way of the sleepy songs and the long nighttime sleeps.

Also, we'll be moving soon, to a different part of Portland. I'll tell you all about it later.







*One of Cook's physical attributes that I deeply envy is his thick, luxuriant hair. The other is his ridiculously lush eyelashes, that would be totally appropriate for a small cartoon animal of the adorable variety. Dutch inherited them, though Skipper seems to have missed that particular genetic boat.

First, Skipper's hair clip.

Next, the bun.
This is what we started with.


Midway through.
The final product. "I look like a porcupine!" said Dutch. We definitely have to find a hairnet somewhere.

Untrained

I don't style my hair. I don't wear makeup. I don't know how to do those things. I am woefully ill-equipped to be Dutch's mom. Not only is her Fanciness Standard way way higher than mine, but she chooses activities that require skills I do not have.

For her ballet performance next week she is supposed to wear "stage makeup - earth tones only!" and have a perfect bun "with no wisps." Dear lord. She doesn't even have long enough hair to make a bun! And nobody in the world except ballerinas and long-haired cooks wears hair nets anymore, so it's impossible to find them at, say, your neighborhood drugstore. And should I ever be able to find a hair net, I will then have to make a no-wisp hairdo out of it. I can barely remember to brush my own hair in the mornings.

I took a first step today and went to the drugstore where they did not have hairnets, where I also looked for styling gel or hairspray or whatever normal people use to style hair. I was just going to buy the cheapest and smallest container, but then I made the horrible mistake of looking at the ingredients list, which went more or less like this: "Gives you cancer, probably compromises your fertility, screws up your lungs, and then kicks you in the head when you're lying in the hospital bed." Why, I'd like to know, would anybody put propane in a product that people put on their skin?* So I had to go to Whole Paycheck and buy something else, which cost almost twice as much but doesn't have any death in it.

Anyway, I told her she's not wearing makeup. She can wear the tinted lip balm I accidentally bought. And we'll have to practice the hairdo all week. I'll post a photo!

*If you'd like to figure out how to find products that make you Fancy without putting your health at risk, check out Skin Deep.

Not the same

Skipper is not like her sister. This is something of which I have to remind myself every day. We were parenting blank slates when Dutch was born, and we picked up on her preferences. This time, we assume we know what Skipper wants (ie what Dutch wanted), and we're thus slower to catch on to what she DOES want.

She often wants to be held away from the holder's torso, so she can look at us (and the ceiling, or something else totally random but apparently fascinating). Sometimes she actually wants to be just put down and left alone. I'd read about this phenomenon in various parenting books, but it was definitely not the case with Dutch, who wanted nothing more than to be snuggled up ALL DAY LONG, and was always the sort of baby who molded herself to your body. So I assumed it was parental fantasy, like that alleged "fussing" that babies were supposed to do. Today I got home from an outing with Skipper, who was grumpy and crying when we walked in the door. I put her into the Chair of Doom so I could put away groceries and wash my hands, and she almost immediately stopped crying. She sat there happily staring at furniture for about 15 minutes before announcing that she was done ("Eh! EEHHH!! EEHHHHH!!!!!!!"). I don't recall Dutch EVER stopping crying spontaneously after being put down. Ever.

Also, Dutch started smiling responsively in her 4th week of life, and Skipper has yet to give us any social smiles at all, well into her 6th week. When I look back at Dutch's infancy, in the brilliance of hindsight, I can identify things - crying as an immediate response to a problem, interest in interacting face-to-face, snuggliness - that are consistent with her personality - lack of resilience, desire for interaction, sensitive response to other people, etc. Where Skipper differs, I immediately assume it means she's going to be entirely the opposite of her sister. Hm. Maybe if I get all this assuming and generalizing and comparing out of the way now, I can provide these girls with an emotionally healthy sibling relationship...

And anyway, Skipper is truly not the stern, semi-autistic hermit I'm making her out to be. She's starting to show signs of turning into a baby-baby (you know, the sort of baby you see in commercials, all chubby and smiley) - she's just hit the 10-pound mark, and spends quite a bit of time looking around with wide eyes* and trying to make her arms obey her will. Her acne is clearing up a bit, and when strangers tell me she's beautiful, I say "Yes, she is! Thank you!" instead of "Ha! You're totally delusional, or maybe blind!"

The other main difference with this second-kid experience is that I'm having a really strong urge to put a hairclip in her hair, something I've always scorned when other parents do it. It's just... she has HAIR! Real hair! I just feel like I should celebrate it!** Also, I've got these hairclips that certain other members of the household refuse to wear because they're not pretty enough... photos coming soon.


* Not so much skeptical squinting going on. She does still look pretty worried, though.
** Dutch was practically bald for her first two years of life. She had this ridiculous mullet - about 2 inches long on top, and these long thin curls in the back, and I resisted Cook's pleading to cut it for far too long.