Weekly Portraits- The Second Week of May- R’s First Haircut

These have been sitting on my camera for a week now…time to get them posted so that we (hopefully) don’t have a constant week lag for portraits!

Because I was gone a good chunk of the weekend of Mother’s Day, and was going to be gone for the entire next weekend, my Mr. took a couple extra days off of work to spend together as a family before I headed to Pittsburgh for Quilt Market.  R’s hair had been getting rather shaggy and was always getting in his eyes, and both G and my husband’s hair were in need of trims as well, so we decided to take a family trip to the barber.

  R’s first haircut started out a lot like his big brother’s first hair cut did.  That is to say, not well.  He managed to sit in the chair by himself, but beyond that, there was just as much wailing, gnashing of teeth and general misery, despite his brother and Daddy’s attempts to soothe him.

Luckily, not long after the haircut started, he got startled by a large truck passing by outside and stopped crying.  It occurred to us that if we could keep him interested enough in what was going on out the door, he’d probably be a happier camper.

So G and I headed outside the building and played peekaboo with him through the window.  Which mostly consisted of me repeatedly lifting 40-some pound G over my head.  Huzzah for aerialist arms.

It did the trick.  He went from sobbing to smiling by the time his hair was done.

  Then it was big brother’s turn.  He’s old hat at it by now.

 …but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still tickle sometimes!

 

3 Years Shampoo Free.

It’s been another year, and I’m still not going back to commercial shampoo.

I honestly almost forgot it was time to talk about this, because being “poo-free” has become so every day for me.  Then a friend of mine sent me a link that included a video of Kathy Lee and Hoda on the Today show ripping apart another blogger for not washing her hair with shampoo.

The whole thing made me really want to write a big, long winded, angry rebuttal, going point for point about all the things that were wrong, poorly researched, and generally ignorant in their segment.  But, when it comes down to it, I think the absolute worst of it is, on national tv, a supposedly respectable 60 year old woman is bullying a complete stranger.  I don’t want to add to that by throwing more vitriol out there.  Those who would listen already know better than to believe the kind of nonsense they were saying, and those who don’t…well, they wouldn’t listen anyhow.

  So, after 3 years without shampoo, here’s where things stand for me:

  I hate my hair.  Like, extra “a”s and “t”s for emphasis, hate.

  This has exactly nothing to do with being poo free, and everything to do with the weather, and that sweet little booger in my arms above.

  I can say this with confidence, because I’ve also been the absolute happiest with my hair while doing poo free.  Also, because my hair did this exact same thing after I was pregnant with G.

  Problem is, this being one of the coldest winters in memory, our heating has been running constantly.  My whole house is a static electric tinderbox.  Add to that the fact that, as happens after you have a baby, a large portion of my hair fell out this summer.  All of that hair has grown back to about 3″ long.  I have a constant, staticky halo around my head that makes me look a bit like a lightning-struck dandelion puff.

  Winter and post-pregnancy blues aside, I’m still pleased with washing with baking soda.

  One of the biggest questions about poo-free that I had been, up until this point, unable to answer, was how dyed hair fared with it.  I added my turquoise streaks to my hair at the end of August and have only had to re-dye them twice…one of those times being this past week.  That’s with semi-permanent hair dye.  They don’t make permanent teal dye.  So needless to say, poo free is dyed hair safe.

  While I was pregnant with R, I got down to using the baking soda once a week.  I’m back to twice a week, for a couple of reasons.  One, my skin, including my scalp, gets really dry when I’m pregnant.  I honestly could have gone longer than a week at times.  Two, I’m exercising a lot more now than I was when I was pregnant.  Obviously I wasn’t doing aerial at 8 months huge.  I use the baking soda rinse when my hair gets greasy, and I just rinse with water when it isn’t.  I wash my hair when I need to wash my hair.  Simple as that.

  I started with no-poo mostly out of curiosity about what it would do to my hair, but it has been a fascinating journey in other ways too.  If I had any doubt about the powers of marketing before this, I definitely don’t now.  There hasn’t been shampoo in my shower for 3 years.  I still have to fight myself to not buy a bottle any time I wind up in the hair care aisle.  I don’t need it, heck, I don’t even really want it, but there’s that siren call of “this shampoo will make your life perfect” always there.  …obviously the only thing standing between me and euphoria is the lack of a new bottle of Pantene, right?  It sometimes makes me question which other items I “can’t live without” are just emotional manipulation.

  I can’t help but feel that the woman who was chosen for the segment I linked to above was picked because she was an easy target.  She admits to being “crunchy”…to the point it’s part of her blog name.  That’s scary to a lot of people.  She different, and unapologetic about it.  I suspect that my blog, or the blog of somebody more like me, wasn’t picked, because it would have been a lot harder to build a case of “yuck, dirty hippie”.  I don’t use shampoo…but I dye my hair turquoise.  I make my own clothes, but out of obnoxiously bright colors or black, not vegetable dyed, organic cotton.  I do my best to keep my kids’ screen time to an absolute minimum and don’t have “real” tv, but I don’t co-sleep, and I use disposable diapers.  I wear makeup, and high heels and tend to only buy organic when it’s convenient.  I hate to admit it, but I’m middle of the road.

  I don’t use shampoo, not because I’m trying to avoid the chemicals per se (though that’s a bonus), but because it works for me to not use it.  I’d wonder if I were fooling myself, if it weren’t for the half dozen or so non-crunchy friends who have tried it, based simply on my success.  If I’m a hippie, apparently I’m a pleasant smelling, nicely styled hippie.  I’m non-threatening, so maybe if it works for me, it’s not quite so out there.

  But, I’m getting dangerously close to heading off on a rant, so I’ll stop this here.

  If you’re curious about anything with no-poo, or heck, just feel like telling me you think I’m delusional and my head probably stinks*, leave a comment!

*Please be warned, if you do so, I’ll probably revoke my decision to not rant.

We’re BACK!

  It’s been a restful couple of weeks and I’m ready to get back to creating with you guys!  While I was gone, we headed back up to the cottage for my birthday…

  …I went out dancing with a friend, went paperless (or at least got well on my way), mended and altered a ton of clothing that had been sitting aside for much too long, weeded and mulched several of my gardens and…oh yeah, did this to my hair:

  I’m not sure if my hair didn’t fall out as soon post-pregnancy with G or if I just didn’t notice it because it was so much shorter, but this time around, it decided to start right away. My hair being nice and long, I was combing a kitten’s worth of hair out of my head every morning and leaving a bunny in the drain when I washed it at night.  It was definitely time for a cut.

  I’m donating the extra to Children with Hair Loss.  I think this is the 3rd or 4th time I’m donating my hair?  I figure if I don’t want it, somebody else can use it and CWHL only requires 8″. 

  Oh, and no, your eyes don’t deceive you, that is in fact turquoise hair you’re seeing.

  I’ve always wanted to try a funky color for my hair, but have always been too chicken to try it before.  Doing my classes in accounting, I figure once I wind up back in the “real world” after the boys are in school, I’m probably not going to be able to get away with it.  So, I decided to bite the bullet (it’s only hair after all, it does grow!) and had my stylist try it out.  I love it.  It’s actually a lot more subtle than it looks in this picture (I pulled back some of my natural colored hair to let it show), but don’t be surprised when you see a peek of blue green sneaking out in my pictures!

  I have a couple of projects in mind for the next few weeks, but I want to know, what do you guys want to see?  Leave me a comment or shoot me an email, I’ve missed you!

Maple Bud Hair Comb

  This past weekend I celebrated a friend of mine’s birthday.  We’ve been friends since middle school, and she is one of the few people I know who not only has hair long enough, but actually chooses to adorn it with elaborate picks and combs.  I don’t tend to find a whole lot of opportunity to wear hair-jewelry myself, but I love making it, so I inevitably wind up making something for her as a gift!

  Our yard has a ton of maple trees in it, and all of them are budding out right now.  The pinkish red of the ends of their branches is just gorgeous against the cornflower blue of the sky, and so I decided I wanted to try and make a comb that looked a bit like the branches of my trees.

  The seed beads photographed rather orange for some reason or another, but in natural daylight they’re more pink.  If you look at the beads in the bottom left-hand corner you can get a better idea of their true coloring.

  To make this, I used fine wire and two types of beads turned into beaded branches using the same method I wrote up this past summer.

  My friend loved it, and hopefully she’ll get lots of wear out of it.  As well as it turned out, I’m half tempted to make myself one.  Too bad I know it’d be in my hair all of 30 seconds before one curious little boy or another yanked it out…

Two Years, No Shampoo

  It’s that time again…time for me to update you on how my quest to become the dirtiest, stinkiest-headed hippie this side of the Mississippi is going.

  Yup, I’m still ‘poo free, and to paraphrase Taylor Swift, shampoo, we are never, ever, ever getting back together.

  I got fancy this year and, unlike last year, actually blow dried it for you this time.

  So, ready to be horrified?

  I now, two years after giving up shampoo, only “wash” my hair once a week.  Once.

  I usually wash it on Tuesdays while G is at daycare, and I’ll admit, by Sunday it’s typically ready for a ponytail, so I rinse it out with plain water and use my fingers to scrub my scalp….but I’m getting a good, solid 4 days of wearing my hair down and it looking great before that without any work.  Me, who used to have to put my hair up in a ponytail by the end of the day I’d washed it when I started all this.

  Obviously, getting to this point has taken some time.  This time last year I could only go 3 days between washes.  But the longer I’m ‘poo free the happier I am I tried this.  And to answer the question before it’s asked, no, I don’t take all of my pictures on Tuesdays or Wednesdays…my hair in my photos for the other posts is just how my hair is on whatever day of the week it happens to be.  You can get a pretty good idea of how it looks through-out the week by browsing them.

  I’m still using the lessons I talked about last time…the vinegar rinse has to happen occasionally and obviously my shower cap is seeing quite a bit of use (I’m not going a week between showers!) but all in all, I don’t really think about my hair anymore.  I style it if/when I blow dry it after the weekly wash and then leave it alone til Saturday or Sunday.  I rinse it that night and sleep on it wet, usually twisted some to give it some wave.  About half the time that leaves me with gorgeously wavy, full hair.  The other half the time I look like an electrocuted homeless person and resort to a ponytail or a hat til it calms down.  I don’t touch it again til the next Tuesday.

  All that time I’m not messing with my hair means waaaay more time for sewing.  I love it.

  So want to try it now?  Click through to the original post (please ignore the terrible photography) for the shampoo “recipe” and make sure you check out last year’s update for some tips and tricks.  If you still have any questions, leave them here and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Growth

  This past Friday, G got his first haircut.  It was traumatic for all of us (the Mr. had taken the day off for our anniversary and was with us), but G was by far the most vocal about it.

  We sat and watched as the barber cut hair for about a half an hour before it was G’s turn.  He wasn’t happy about the idea of sitting in the chair by himself, so I let him sit on my lap.  He wasn’t happy about the cape.  He definitely wasn’t happy about the electric shavers.

  He was fine and smiling within 10 minutes of the whole ordeal being over.

  This is the part that’s traumatizing for me.

  After G’s cut was done, the barber gave us a “First Haircut Certificate”.  It reads:

This is to certify that ….. has bravely met all of the requirements of receiving their first 

haircut and has graduated from babyhood on the [21st] day of [October] in the year 

of [2011].

  …wait a minute now.  I didn’t agree to that!  I’m having a hard enough time with the idea we just gave up his long hair (I knew the longer I let it grow, the harder the first hair cut would be on me)…nobody told me we were cutting off his babyhood!  

  I don’t like it.  That isn’t a reflection on the barber, or even the haircut.  But it makes my baby look like a little boy…and it turns out I’m not quite ready for that.

  Guess  I should get used to that, huh?