My Baby’s First Haircut

My 18-month-old had his first haircut over the weekend and it’s like he had some magic makeover in Cosmo magazine and turned into a little boy. That’s precisely why I put it off for so long. Unlike Jonah, who was born with reverse male pattern baldness (long hair on the sides and back, bald on top), Asher rocked a full head of golden brown locks from the beginning.

As his hair grew longer, his shaggy, rock star hair inspired serious hair envy even in real rock stars. My husband’s cousin is Justin Warfield of She Wants Revenge and when he met Asher for the first time, he couldn’t stop admiring his effortlessly shaggy hair. “Oh My God, he has such good hair! I can’t believe it just grows like that?! You don’t do anything to it?”

Soon, the cute rocker hair started growing longer in the back and started to look like a baby mullet - not so cute.  But still, I hesitated to cut it. I knew that with a few snips of the scissors would transform his baby face into a toddler face and I wasn’t quite ready to let my last baby grow up. However laziness eventually trumped sentimentality as I quickly grew tired of picking dried food out of his unruly bangs. The ever-present tangles in his hair after shampooing only unraveled after a good deep conditioning. I was lucky to shampoo and rinse his hair, let alone get him to sit for conditioner and a comb-through. When his beauty regimen became more involved than mine, I knew it was time.

He happily sat in my husband’s lap while the stylist snipped off his golden brown curls. I requested them to keep it long and shaggy enough so he could keep his curls and the stylist tucked all the hair into a little envelope for me since it was his first haircut. Afterwards, she took a polaroid photo of the family and tucked it into a keepsake certificate that stated “Asher has graduated from babyhood with his first haircut.” I’m not the sentimental type, but this got me all misty-eyed since it was the truth. He suddenly looks like a little boy. Everyone who sees him can’t believe the difference.

The envelope of hair goes into my hatbox full of other sentimental treasures like Jonah’s baby teeth. Besides moms, only serial killers collecting trophies from their victims and Howard Hughes types would keep detritus like teeth and hair. Like sociopaths and psychopaths, I guess moms like me are obsessive, single-minded…and a little bit crazy.