June 26th - Emma's first haircut

Yep, Emma Claire finally had her first haircut just one month shy of her third birthday. Her hair is so pretty and it was hard to decide it was time to cut it, but she really needed a trim. Chris and I spent a lot of time talking to her about it and tried to build it up to be a fun experience.

Chris and I have been going to see our friend Linda to have our hair cut for many years now. Linda is by far one of the nicest people I have ever met and she has a huge heart. I knew there was a strong possibility that Emma would not like having her hair cut (she doesn't even like me to comb it) so I prepared Linda for the worst and asked her a few times if she was sure she wanted to try and cut it. Linda assured me she wanted the chance and so we made our appointment for Saturday afternoon.

Emma was actually excited on the way over to the store and I thought I was so foolish for spending so much time worrying about everything. It looked as if it was going to be a good experience and I started to look forward to the whole thing. Boy, was I wrong. As soon as we walked in the door, I looked at Emma and watched her face fall and soon dissolve into tears. I tried to distract her, but eventually took her outside since the other customers were starting to stare. Chris and I took turns talking to her and Linda came outside to say hi and check on her periodically. We were not making much progress at this point and Chris and I kept wondering if we should stick it out or try again another day. Normally I wouldn't think twice about it and just go ahead with what we had planned, but there were other customers to consider plus I didn't want to frighten Linda :-)

Slowly we worked our way over to a chair and sat down. We let Emma play with a water bottle and she managed to get us both wet while crying off and on. We asked Linda to start and she gamely agreed so she got to work while Emma sat first in Chris' lap and then in mine. Once her hair was wet, Emma started to relax a little and we even got her to smile briefly. As the haircut progressed and Linda worked at many odd angles to trim her hair, Emma slowly began to dry her tears and realize it was going to be ok. By the time it was over, she was laughing, smiling and she gave Linda a hug and kiss much to my astonishment. Needless to say, Linda has a tremendous amount of patience and she was wonderful with Emma. I think somewhere during the whole thing I had to promise free babysitting to Linda for when she has kids. A small price to pay :-)

We took Emma out to dinner after we were finished. At one point, she was standing by the table and laughing at Chris while I reflected on the amazing little girl she is growing up to be. It was around this time that she pulled her dress up to her neck and showed everyone in the restaurant her super white legs, belly and chest plus her princess underwear. Yep, that's our girl!






























































































































By the way, Emma was wearing shoes at one point, but we let her take them off in an effort to make her happy. She definitely prefers to go without shoes. I just wanted to mention it so that you wouldn't think we were totally weird for letting her go out like that without shoes. It was just one of the many things we tried to get her into a better mood :-)