Simple Maintenance

I cannot believe how much time I spend on the very simple maintenance of my children’s growing protein appendages. That’s right, I am talking hair and nails here, People. It is crazy.

I think it is the 20-month old boy that is putting me over the edge. He has to be held down bodily for finger nail cutting and he wigs out every time he hears the sound of our home clippers coming within an inch of his head. Seriously, it is so bad that I actually took him to our Army barbershop a few weeks ago to see if things would be any better there. You must understand what a drastic move this is for us. We have the reputation amongst all of our friends and family of being the most thrifty family around, and I was willing to pay $9.50 for someone else to cut this hair.

Things looked good when we got there, they had little booster seats, Spiderman covers, lollipops. I even went to the effort of going down there with our 2-year-old neighbor boy to show Seth how it is done. Futile, awful, humiliating, ridiculous and totally insane are the words I must use to describe the next 12 minutes in that barbershop. My little man writhed, spit 3 lollipops on the floor and tried to swipe the scissors and clippers out of the barber’s hands. When we were done, I paid $20 and told the man to keep the change — that is how bad it was. Unreal.

So, anyhow, I am not looking for advice here, I am back to home haircuts for the little man, and my near 5-year old daughter has cute curly hair that is much more forgiving with my shears. I just want to say, holy cow. We talk about the importance of how we educate, discipline and love our children, but what about this simple maintenance?! I definitely took something for granted for the first eleven years of my life, holy cow. Maybe I just need to stop feeding them their ubernatural gummy vitamins? Let their little bodies atrophy and then I can avoid the drama of these bi-monthly protein cuts? Hmm..