Kid-Friendly, Passionate, and Professional

I am swearing off those "fun" haircutting joints for kids, like this one or like the one we visited today, Cool Cuts 4 Kids. We went there before on the recommendation of a neighbor. It wasn't a great experience, but it wasn't horrible, and at least I got his hair cut. This time, though: not good.

First we went to give blood, and the phlebotomist, remembering us from previous visits, mentioned how big he's getting and how long his hair is. It's hard to tell how adorably moppish it is here, but this is the "before" picture I took (with the usual camera resistance):

So I told her that we were going to get a haircut today, but I spelled the word and told her I didn't want to give him advance warning since he's not real keen on the idea of haircuts lately. She told me that her kid hates haircuts too, but she didn't spell it, and Thumper immediately started yelling about how he WON'T get a haircut! Thanks, lady.

So we headed to the barber that we went to for his second-ever haircut. That one went pretty smoothly and was about $7 cheaper than the Fun! For Kids! places. But today, the barber was closed. How do you make a business profitable by closing shop in the middle of the day on a Monday, is what I'd like to know, but oh well. So we went to Cool Cuts again.

Immediately, I knew it was a bad idea. I think I could've made it work, but the available "stylist" wasn't going to let me. Thumper ran straight to the train table at the front of the shop. He loves trains, and he remembered it from our previous visit. I would've let him play for a bit and get comfortable, but she immediately tried to grab his hand and lead him away. So I picked him up to carry him to the chair. The phone rang, and she ran to the back to answer it, so I let him choose between the yellow car and the red fire truck. He chose the car. When I started to put him into it, he tensed up and said, "I don't want a haircut!" I held on to him while he stood in the seat, pointed out the T.V., and told him he could watch a Barney video. God help me; the kid loves Barney. He was just warming to the idea when the "stylist" suddenly returned, put her hands on both his thighs and started forcibly pushing him hard down into the chair. He began screaming, locked his arms around my neck and climbed straight up my torso.

So I picked him up and walked quickly toward the door.

"Wait, wait!" she said. "I have a lollipop!"

"If you'd given me a minute," I yelled, "I could've talked him into it, but you pushed him and now he's freaking out. I'm not going to do it now. He's a human being, not a puppet!"

"I'm sorry!" she said. "Wait, wait!" But we were gone. I may have mumbled an inappropriate word or two on our way out the door.

I sat in the car with Thumper for a few minutes and calmed him down. I reassured him we weren't going back to the barber, and that I was mad at her, not at him. I asked him if he wanted to go to his favorite place for lunch. I reassured him some more. He stopped crying, and I buckled him into his seat.

"Did you say, 'Goddammit?'" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm sorry. It's not a nice thing to say."

"Say, 'Darnit.'" he advised. Then, "I'm going to dry my eyes a little bit. They're wet."

God, I love that kid.

I WON'T Get Haircut!

Thumper's all about asserting his will these days. Almost anything Aerie or I suggest is met with, "I WON'T _________!" Today, it was, "I WON'T get haircut!" A couple of weeks ago, when we were posing for the SAHD's Group Photo, he would only cover his face and say, "I WON'T take picture! I WON'T take picture!" He won't brush teeth; he won't change diaper; he won't sit on da potty; he won't pick a book; he won't drink milk; he won't cottage cheese. Funny, though; he never says no to popsicles or ice cream.

So, anyway, the header photo was going to be my before haircut shot, with an after to follow. But he still WON'T take picture! My status update to Facebook this morning, which apparently evaporated into thin air, never to be seen again, was:

"I WON'T get haircut!" We'll see, little man. We'll see.

Well, we did see, and it turns out he was right. He WON'T; he WOULDN'T; he DIDN'T.

We went to Sharkey's Cuts for Kids today, which offers two-year-old boys haircuts for $18.95, I think the lady said when I called, which is $8 more than his last barber shop haircut. But we had a coupon for $5 off, and I thought it'd be nice to give him a fun experience after sticking him in the car all morning for our Meals on Wheels route.

We walked in, and there was no one around. He saw the Barbie Jeep barber seat and went straight for it. It looked to him, I'm sure, just like the coin-op rides at the mall that I never put money in but let him climb all over. He was doing his best to climb up into it when one and then another of the employees appeared from the back. They both descended on him, since we were the only customers in the joint. I tried to tell them to back off a bit and let him ease into it himself, but they were determined to get right in his face and offer him a lollipop and cartoons on the TV and an XBOX controller and show him how all the buttons on the various car-shaped barber seats made their engines rev and their horns honk. They also tried to redirect him from the Barbie Jeep to the Ferrari, which I thought was pretty funny.

And of course, being the kid who's convinced that lifeguards are out to get him, the harder they tried, the more nervous and upset he was. The more nervous and upset he was, the harder they tried. It was a doomed proposition from the beginning and ended with us leaving, sans haircut. Oh well. I guess when he wakes up from his nap, I'll try the clippers. But he probably WON'T stand for that, either.

Buzz

We tried to save a few bucks and cut his hair ourselves, but it became clear that we were creating a disaster. So we decided to break out the clippers. And while I can't stop smiling whenever I look at him (because he's got a haircut just like his Daddy's now), I think his Mama died a little bit inside.

Oh, You Know, This and That

This morning I finally hit ten pounds lost since the boy was born. A pound a month isn't a great rate, but it's better than nothing. And better than gaining. I didn't, as I hoped, get to the point before summer arrived where I'm not self-conscious about taking off my shirt at the pool. Thumper loves the pools, as do Freckles and Robert McGee, so we'll be spending a lot of time at them this summer. I guess I have to keep trying, and also try to get to the point where I don't worry about what other people think. It's not like everybody else out there is a swimsuit model.

I gave Thumper his first haircut last night. It was hanging over his ears. The Mrs. and I periodically mentioned that we should do something about it, but it seemed like it would be hard to accomplish on a squirming infant, so we never followed through. I told her I could just buzz it all off like I do with my own, but she wasn't keen on that idea. So last night, I had a few drinks, took the sharp, steely, slicing implement in shaking fingers, and let fly. Just kidding; I only had one drink. I trimmed over his ears and straightened out his bangs where his widow's peak made them uneven. Actually, they're still uneven. It's hard to cut a squirming infant's hair. I kind of regret doing it now; I think I Delilahed his Samsony cuteness. He looks like he's moved a bit down the scale from babyish to boyish.

I haven't been blogging or twittering much. I've just kinda been laying low. I've been thinking a lot about the portions of What the Fuck Do We Know? that deal with shaping one's own reality and about how people repeat the same behaviors because they've established neural net patterns and they're addicted to the brain chemicals that result from those behaviors. I've also been playing a lot of Scarface. These two things don't exactly go together very well, but when I found out that the latest in my beloved Grand Theft Auto series, GTA IV will not be available on Playstation 2, and simultaneously realized that I have no interest in purchasing a PS3 or XBox, or Wii, or whatever else, I used the last trade-in credits that I was saving for GTA IV on the closest thing I could find: Scarface. Last night I folded some diapers, then killed the Diaz brothers with a chainsaw. After that, I folded some more diapers, then took over the coke warehouse. It's cathartic, but not very New Agey.

I thought I was going to blog about What the Fuck Do We Know?, but by now I think it's gone the way of the review I was going to write for The Time Traveler's Wife: by the time I got around to it, the moment had passed.

I also thought I was going to blog about what Now Me thinks of 1995 Me and the paper he wrote, but it turns out I don't have that much to say. It was a paper written five months before I was married and twelve years before I actually became a househusband. The part about the fear of being perceived as gay is a little stupid, but I guess the movement from "househusband" = "less manly," to "less manly" = "gay" makes sense in a way. I do feel awkward being the only dad sometimes, but I don't feel a loss of respect, but it is twelve years later, and I doubt that it could still be said that "[s]tatistically, few men enter into the role of househusband completely voluntarily." I get Tracey's thoughts on gender socialization and how I omitted any consideration of same-sex couples, but I think it was outside the scope of the paper since it focused on reversing gender roles in heterosexual couples that had previously embraced more traditional gender roles. I also think it's part of her template to be ever-vigilant for racism/sexism/homophobism. And in my opinion, her illustrative boy being raised by lesbians mothers is still likely be socialized toward traditional male gender roles by one or the other of those mothers anyway. At least, that's what my experience with lesbian couples leads me to believe. But perhaps that's homophobic to say. Still, I'm glad she read it and had something to say about it. Thanks, Tracey!

We'll be at the Brushy Creek Lake Park water playscape around 12:30 today. Stop by and say hello. It's a good time.