Spray, snip, blow dry

You know how sometimes you go into things totally expecting the worst, and then, when the worst doesn’t happen, you are overjoyed? That pretty much describes the hair cut experience.

Dave and I had incredibly low expectations. Every time I had gone at her with the scissors to trim her bangs, or he had tried to calm her bed head in the morning with a spray bottle, or I had offered a blow out before bed, we were met with a universal response: squirming and screaming and general refusal to comply. As you can imagine, we were dreading 4 p.m. last Saturday with a deep, abiding fear.

What happened was pretty much the exact opposite. She played on the slide when we got there, chose to sit in a race car for the cut and sat quietly while stylist Leslie wielded all three things that were previously instruments of torture – spray bottle, scissors, hair dryer – and even smiled prettily for the camera when it was all over. She even let Leslie put a barrette in her hair, which she repeatedly pointed out to me for the rest of the day as “pretty.”

She was so good we immediately took her to a local discount retailer to choose new bedding for her “big girl bed” (a.k.a. the crib with the side taken off). She chose a Dora the Explorer bed set (big surprise) and I picked up some extra sheets – Dora and Diego.

I guess I’ve always known that “kids will surprise you.” And R is well-known for behaving like an angel while out in most public places. But this display… blew my mind. And that’s one thing that has seemed to happen an awful lot since December 28, 2005. She just blows my mind.