A rite of passage for Norah

This past Saturday, Norah woke up about 25 minutes to six. In the morning. She came into our bedroom and bothered the cats for a while, which woke me up. But I stayed in bed, dozing. I could hear her wandering around, but as long as she wasn't screaming her head off, I was happy. For an hour the world was calm. I finally got up about 6.40 and walked out into the kitchen/family room area to find Norah, who was no longer in the bedroom. Sitting on the floor was my daughter. With a hunk of her own hair in her hands.

Yes, she had gotten hold of some craft scissors that Krys has been using for her cross-stitching and started chopping off her own hair. She looked right at me and said, "Why you cut off hair?" She does that quite often - she knows she's done something she probably shouldn't do, and she mimics what she thinks her parents will say to her. I just chuckled, because I wasn't mad at all - she's a kid, after all, and we're always happy when our kids do typical kid things. I was upset a little because she could easily have hurt herself with the scissors - they're amazingly blunt, which makes the fact that she could cut her hair more amazing, but they're still scissors - but if she wants to cut her hair, go for it, say I. I went back to the bedroom, shook Krys awake, and told her to look at her daughter. Norah followed me into the bedroom and climbed up on the bed. Krys was briefly aghast, but what are you going to do?

We called the salon where the females get their hair cut and made an appointment for later that afternoon. The woman who cut her hair was impressed by how well she actually did, so we told her that Norah was just practicing to be a stylist. She got a cute little pixie cut, and we told her that at least her head would be cool now, as it's bereft of so much hair. She often wants her hair in a ponytail because it's hot on her neck, but that's not an issue anymore! When the woman was done cutting her hair, Norah said, "You look wonderful," which is her way of saying "I look wonderful" (she has some trouble with "I" and "You," which I guess is normal), and we were off!

Of course we chronicled it all with photographs. What kind of parents would we be if we didn't capture all the embarrassing moments of our children's lives for when they're older? So here they are:





Here's all the hair she took off:


Here's her brand new haircut:





She's still a cutie, isn't she? We don't think she's quite sure what happened, but she seems happy with it. We're not sure what this will do to her wavy hair, as when Mia's head was shaved, her new hair was very thick and hard to comb (it still is). Norah has always had thin hair, so we'll see if it grows back thick or not.

So that was Norah's Saturday. It was quite the scene.