Sweet 17 Months

Oh my little pretty princess. You are just the worlds fastest learner this month. You're starting to say all kinds of words. just this morning you surprised me when I pulled out your day socks and you said "ock!" I just about fell over! And just yesterday you learned how to climb up on big people chairs and sit just like a grown up, of course that also means you can now climb onto the table. I'm excited!

This month has been a lot of attitude and stubbornness from you. You refuse to do anything if you don't want to and you don't want to do anything unless it's your way. This can be frustrating as I want you eat and you don't want to. You can be really good about it, as long as you can feed yourself, but you're a little ticked off if I try to feed you. So anything that is not finger food does not make it passed your lips unless i can trick you into eating it and that only lasts about 1 maybe 2 bites. But you did awesome with Thai food! You really liked it! That and you flirted with the waitress all night long! I hope that reduced our bill a little.

Your crazy eating habits are driving me nuts. You won't eat hardly anything, except yogurt, you'll eat tons of yogurt, but no fruit, no bread, no veggies, no pizza, no mac'n'cheese. I tricked you into eating tiny little bites by asking you you what something tasted like and you do try it, but that was about as good as it would get. You want soup of something, but your hand/eye coordination isn't really that advanced. You are doing okay with your oatmeal, but some days are better than others and some days you don't really want to eat it, you want to paint with it or toss spoonfuls onto the floor.

You are such a daddy's little girl. You are even saying Daah-ee now, which is cute, but come on! I'm the one you slaves over your every need (from the hours of 5 pm to 7 am) but you love to show me that you want to hang out with daddy instead. You'll eat for him where you'll spit the food out if I give it to you. You'll cry if I pick you up but cry if he won't pick you up. It makes him feel very loved, but me a little less loved, but I guess it's your finicky child nature and of course you're starting your terrible twos way early.

You love to babble and our morning and evening drives are accented with you talking Chinese all the way to our destination (unless you are tired, then you just stare blankly until someone gets you out of your chair and you're full of life all of the sudden) and it's so cute, You talk to your toys and on pretend phones. I swear I'm not on the phone that much, so I don't know where you learned all this.

It's been a silly month full of love and it's been a hard month full of new teeth and being sick, but at least every day with you is an adventure.

Love,
Mama

Would you be my Valentine?

I remember fondly the days of childhood spent making pink and red paper hearts and infusing them with white paper dollies and maybe some glitter and then in the advancing years trying to figure out which store bought valentines were the best to give to my favorite friends and boys i had crushes on. I really wish that i could keep some of the paper magic alive after all these years, but really Valentines holds little meaning to me anymore. It's a good time to buy and eat chocolate, but really, I don't think that I need a holiday for that. I like the idea that there a holiday to tell people that you love them, but once again, should we need a holiday for that? Perhaps I'm just a scrooge because I'm at work and I just got down with my "scult and tone" class and it was "butts and guts" day (which honestly, thank you to my teacher as I've been waiting for her work out our butts all semester!) so now I'm tired and faced with the prospect of a long commute home and perhaps that has made me cynical. Even still, it's nice to have a day where even though we don't get work off, we could (if we could be bothered) make little pink contruction paper hearts for our friends and boys we have crushes on and no one will think we're weird today of all days.

The Scissors-They Eated My Hair!

So I decided it was time to get my hair colored again since my roots were about 4 feet long and I desperately needed a trim as when I hold Hayley to put her to bed, she pushes my hair away from her face just like her father does. Bunch of babies. So I needed some inches off and new reddish red-brown and some new streaks. Last time I got some orange bleach streaks to compliment the month of October, which was very autumnal and lovely, but I was inspired by one of Hayley's dolls. What you can't see from the picture to the left, is that with her cute red hair, she has pale pink streaks in her hair and I thought this was so totally cute. So I decided I would ask if they could do that.

First things first, these people, they are beauty school students and also, the girl I got today? Very Chinese. Which is fine, if you can understand what she's saying. So I ask her if I can get pink, the instructors helps her figure out what I want and they say it's no problem, and I got the impression they just mix something into the bleach and I'll get pink! Hurrah! So my girl gets another Chinese girl who is not doing anything and they start on my color. I'm thinking that since there are 2 of them this will just fly by! Well it did until they got to the crown of my head. Where I wanted streaks. Except they must have thought I wanted a weave. A real tight weave. They spent, no freaking joke, about 30 minutes foiling my hair. They would take about 6 strands of hair and make that one color, then take another 6 strands of hair and make that a different color and so on until I was wearing about 5 pounds of tin foil on my head. I'm little nervous at this point, because these Chinese girls, they were like machines, where I would have given up and just slapped some color on my head, they were meticulous about those 6 strands until the whole top of my head was done. So the bleach and color sat on my hair a few more minutes and then rinse. After the rinse she then put the red color into my hair, which I wasn't sure how this red was going to end up pink but the instructor didn't seem concerned, so I didn't fret. That sat on my hair 10 minutes and got rinsed off. That's when I saw the mirror. My pink streaks were fire engine red. The instructor came and looked and said "looks good" and walked off. Um, excuse me? This isn't close to pink! But I looked at it for a minute and it's pretty cool and I look like a rock star and I was promised that it will fade when I shampoo it.

So the girls get to washing the color off my face. I always came away from getting a coloring looking a bit like a clown. I get red all over my face and it won't come off. So those 2 armed with Q-tips attacked the offending red. They were getting it off my scalp too! They would take a few centimeters of hair, go in-between and scrub off the dye. It was crazy, I have never had someone try to get color off my scalp before, but maybe since it was crazy bright red they didn't want me to look like a freak.

That's when I tried to explain what I wanted to happen with my trim. I wanted about 3-4 inches off it, so that hair doesn't get stuck in my armpit but still fairly long, about 2 inches past my shoulder is what I described. So she starts to cut, and cut and cut and cut. I told her I wanted one little layer that was about an inch off the rest just to add some body and shape. I think I should not have said that. So she layered and layered and then she was done. I looked objectively thinking, 'Well, it's shorter than I wanted, but it's still long enough, it'll grow.' So she dried it and flat ironed it. At this point it was now over 3 hours and while I wasn't itching to get back, I figured the end was near. She spent about 20 minutes flat ironing little tiny pieces of my hair. It was the most thorough styling I've ever had. Then she got her scissors back out. I thought she was just getting a few stay hairs or maybe it wasn't even. No. She was thinning my hair. My already thin, fragile, little hair. Thinning. To add texture I guess. I wanted to cry. I like my hair cuts nice crisp lines. I guess she does not. And with that thinning was more shortening. There was one point where she turned to get a different pair of scissors and I almost took off right at that moment. She took this pair of scissors and added a little really tiny layer about 4 inches from my scalp! I almost lost it right then, but this was some sort of texturing scissors and only cut a few hairs at a time, but still! And she was using her scissors almost like a razor near my face to make more layers! Then she had the gall to ask me if it was short enough. Now that it was about an inch above my shoulders. Yes, I think the 3 inches in length that I'm missing are just fine! Happy smiley face! It had now been almost 4 hours. Four freaking hours! She got me my coat and I ran out of there. I had been planning on giving her a tip, but not after she took the initiative and starting adding crazy layers to my hair. That I didn't ask for! and didn't want! Everyone is saying how cute it is. And they are right. I don't hate it. It very cute and edgy and rock starish, but this is not the color or cut I was prepared for.

So I guess now I have to take my hair vitamins to grows me some more hair fast!