fair hair

when boy-with-fine-straight-thin-blond-hair meets girl-with-fine-straight-thin-blond-hair, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine what kind of hair their children will have. no, there's no one in our family who's been blessed with luxurious locks of any sort. even our dog doesn't have much. i honestly think that hair of the fine-straight-thin variety is the hardest to cut. there is nothing to give it that boost or body or wave. and while adults have numerous styling products and tools at our disposal, there's not much a child can do to make it look like anything other than what it is: fine, straight, and thin. (have i said that already?) my poor children got the worst haircuts of their lives yesterday -- at the same time,while seated in adjacent chairs with different stylists. (which is such a misnomer in our case. styling? what styling?) i was focused on liam, since he was looking up, down, side to side, tilted, backwards ... and with our type of hair, any tiny error with the scissors is immediately apparent. after i got him in some semblance of sitting still, i turned to susanna, only to find that the half-inch trim i had requested had somehow turned into two inches on the floor underneath her. as soon as i swallowed the lump in my throat, i turned back to liam to see way too much forehead staring back at me. i now have a daughter who looks like a boy, and a son who could be the poster child of the movie "dumb and dumber". all this two days before heading down to the beach for our annual family reunion, where undoubtedly hundreds of pictures will be taken to fully capture my children in all their bare-headed glory. so, in my quest to save time and money, i learned two valuable lessons. i learned that having their hair cut simultaneously is a recipe for disaster. and i learned that the $6.99 "special" at great clips ain't so special.