6 weeks and 45 minutes of hair

You may have read posts about Megan's hair before. In fact, I think I've been blogging about it since she was born.

Well, turns out, her hair is AWESOME. It's crazy, but I love it. No other race can get away with having adorable little puffs all over their heads. And, frankly, I don't think any other child with puffs all over her head is as adorable as our Megan. Our girl was born with a bushel of hair and it's only grown bushier since. I was scared it would be too hard to manage, but, luckily, with a little help, it's kinda fun and quite rewarding. One of those things that makes me feel like a real mommy.

My friend, Monica, over at In Plain English, graciously offered to let me watch her do her daughter's hair. If it weren't for Monica, our Megan would still be donning a matted fro. You should check out Monica's blog. She's an amazing woman, fabulous mom, & great writer! Thanks again for all the tips!

Step One: Give the Megster a bath, washing her hair with Olive Oil Shampoo & Conditioner (which actually smells surprisingly yummy!):

Step Two: Bring all necessities downstairs for hair-making session. This includes her hair-accessories-bin, hairclips, boar bristle brush, fine-toothed comb, virgin coconut oil & hair creme, among other things.

Step Three: Put baby in exersaucer & turn on Baby Einstein. Go ahead and judge me for allowing my child to watch the big black box.

Step Four: Wet her head with water & coconut oil, water & creme, or all three!

Step Five: Spend about 45 minutes brushing, wetting, parting, puffing (clarification: puffing, as in, making-puffs-out-of-hair-on-a-baby's-head; not as in huffing-and-puffing-and-blowing-the-house-down... in case you were wondering), and parting, combing, wetting and brushing each section, and again and again.

I can't wait until she is older and is able to sit still for more than 30 seconds at a time. It's hard to make straight lines in her hair with her bouncing up & down, moving around the exersaucer, & trying to grab the comb out of my hands. Also, her curls are so tight that it's hard to split the curls in half when needed. And through all of this, I have to make sure not to make her puffs too tight, pull on her hair, or break her brittle curls.

Unfortunately, her hair gets ridiculously messed up almost minutes after it is done. Megan tugs on her hair when she's sleepy and loves to decorate her hair with food. Also, she ruins it when she sleeps (for obvious reasons). It usually looks horrid by Thursday night, so it all comes out & she goes fro-style until Saturday morning.

This was the first week of hair-do (from this angle you can't see how bad it actually was)

Week 2 (the parts were not very crisp)

Week 3 (Q: does it even look any different than the other weeks?)
Week 4 (A: yes, each week the parts are in a different place, to prevent her hair from growing in a certain direction)

Week 5 (Q: is that a pizza hairstyle?)

(A: It used to be a pizza hairstyle, but Megan likes to "style" her hair with bits of tomato, strawberries, pickles, mac & cheese, and anything else she's eating. I guess you could still call it pizza; just not any type of pizza I'd like to eat.)

Week 6 (one of my favorites, and the parts are finally crisp!):

You might have noticed that all of these styles are mostly on top of her head. This is for two reasons: 1) She doesn't have much hair on the back of her head (from rubbing it off while sleeping), and 2) If I put the puffs on the sides of her head then it might hurt her while she sleeps. When she grow out of naps-- or at least uses a pillow-- I won't have to worry about that so much. Also, when she's older, I can take her hair out every night and fix it up all nice-n-purdy every morning. Right now I just don't think all that work would be worth it.

And, it's a good thing Megan's hair gets the Princess Treatment, because otherwise she'd be sportin' this crazy fro every day:

p.s.- For any of you out there with Princess Treatment experience, I'm happily taking suggestions.
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