Braids

Holy crap, you guys!! Check out Liv's new 'do:














To any new readers who are thinking, “What’s the big deal? The kid is five years old, why wouldn’t you be able to braid her hair?”
Because of this:


My girl pulled her hair out of her head for almost three years. She finally stopped doing it last fall. I didn’t even realize she’d stopped until I realized how long her hair had gotten.

We went from this when she was two years old:


To this, when she was about three, after a year of pulling.


To finally this, which is when we used clippers to cut her hair to about a quarter of an inch long in an effort to even up the sides (she only pulled the left side.) We also hoped that by making her hair too short to pull out, she’d stop the habit.


It didn’t work. She needed to stop sucking her thumb to stop pulling her hair out.

But now we’re at braids. And I know it’s just hair but…when you’re a little girl, you want to be pretty. And as beautiful as I think she is even with shorter than short hair, I know that society can be cruel and I want to help my girl avoid as many cruelties as I can. So if longer hair is possible and it’s what she wants? Well, we’ll do all we can to help her get there.

And those braids didn’t last long. I made her promise to leave them in long enough to show Gram and that’s just how long she left them. As soon as my mom gushed over how cute they were, Olivia was yanking out the elastics that held the braids in place and was then running her hands over her head in an effort to get the braids out. Because she’s five and while she loves having enough hair to braid, she doesn’t want to actually cooperate and leave the braids in. Oh no, that would be too much to ask.