Thursday, June 9, 2011

CSI: Special Hair Unit

My friend once told me about walking into her dining room to find her daughters under the table, sitting in a pile of hair. "It looked like a crime scene," she described. I now know what she means.

The other day, I felt that sudden sense of "uh-oh." Maybe it was mother's instinct, maybe it was just my subconscious picking up on the silence from the other room, but I knew something was wrong. I ran into the living room, where the twins were playing around a small box. Both of the girls looked guiltily up at me, and spoke quickly in rehearsed voices that were a tad loud, a bit too forced in cheerfulness: "We cut our Barbie's hair!" One daughter waved a pair of scissors at me as if to prove the truth of their statement. See, Mom? I have the scissors right here! 

The odd thing was, no Barbies in sight. Also? The twins are NOT allowed to play with scissors. EVER. You may think this rule was enacted for their physical safety, but it's more about my sanity. Too many important papers, beautiful fabrics, and socks have been destroyed by twins with scissors.

I looked into the little box that sat between them. It was full of hair. Not Barbie hair, human hair. "Stand up!" I ordered. "Turn around!" At this point in the story, a good CSI agent would whip out some photographic evidence of the bloodless trauma that occurred in our house that day. But I'm not a forensic specialist, just a distraught mother. I wasn't thinking about documenting the moment with my camera.

One twin—the instigator of the entire mess—confessed that she had cut off the ends of her own braids. Actually, she didn't so much confess as hang her head silently in agreement while her sister screamed, "She did it! She did it!" She'd snipped off the beautiful 3" golden curl hanging from each plait, and then turned on her sister, whose long hair happened to be swinging loose and free in the wind.

Not only are the twins terrible liars, they are terrible beauticians. Entire chunks were chopped from the bangs, sides, and back of the victim's hair.

The silver lining of the story is the very next day, the girls' grandmother was returning from vacation and would be spending the night at our house. Grandma Vickie is a professional hairstylist who owns her own salon. The girls are now sporting shorter bangs and nicely layered, shoulder-length dos.





It all worked out, except for poor Daisy Doodle. I should mention that the girls also cut random pieces of fur off the dog's back. And there's no amount of grooming that can fix that.



Dinner last night: mac and cheese with hot dogs


Exactly three years ago:







12 comments:

Jessica said...

Crazy kids. I'm so glad my children haven't done this (yet).

The poor dog too.

Time to hide all the scissors.

Unknown said...

I'm so sorry, I know it was traumatic for you, but I laughed myself silly reading this post! It was funny enough already, but once I read that even Daisy was included I almost fell off my chair. Thanks so much for sharing - we boy-moms don't have stories like these!

CK said...

I love the CSI twist on the story. One time my little sister got a hold of some scissors and thought it was a good idea to cut the eye lashes from her friend's eye lids. Nothing too terrible happened (THANK FULLY!) but the girl was left eyelash-less and pretty much hairless as well.

Dianna@KennedyAdventures said...

I want photo evidence of everyone .... including the dog, before and after photos.

Phew ... Rachel's only done that once , thank goodness .....

Unknown said...

I am filled fear every time he asks to use his scissors that he will lose hair. It sounds like they were though.

Making It Work Mom said...

Oh no! Believe it or not none of my children have ever done this...yet. Now I have totally jinxed it.
At least your girls had a lot of hair to begin with. I have seen girls with cute little chin length bobs get scissor happy and there is not much you can do to fix that!

But the dog! Oh no!

Vicki @ Grams Made It said...

I was always so careful to keep the scissors away from my kids. Then we went of vacation and stayed at a friend's river house. Same thing happened, I just realized it was too quiet. She just cut her bangs, right down to the scalp. Her beautiful red hair was practically scalped right at the front. I wish I had thought to take a picture.

AlaskaMom said...

I know that friend! And it was a crime scene! All that was missing was the yellow tape and the body outlines. I'm happy to report everybody lived, and they are now almost 12 and 13 and you know what, they never cut their hair again after that day. I will NEVER forget the shock! I'm proud of you for handling it so well! It took me a solid week of not wanting to kill someone. And as my oh-so-clever husband pointed out, I do laugh about it now! I gave the whole thing FOUR pages in my scrapbook. I think it's one of those annyoing rights of passage things. Loved your post!

LisaDay said...

Ha, ha, ha. That video made me laugh. Poor pup.

LisaDay

Karen M. Peterson said...

I know it's pretty much inevitable for kids to do this at some point, but it still seems so shocking when they actually do it.

I'm really surprised I never gave myself a haircut.

Liz Mays said...

You had such a good attitude about it.

I'm glad their hair was styled the next day. I'll bet they actually look really cute right now.

Mother Mayhem said...

EEK! Chuckle.

Sweetums once cut the entire front of her hair off... Down to the scalp! She had to wear a serious comb-over for a looong time. ;o)