My Living Doll

When I was a little girl, I had tons of baby dolls and I loved them all. My favorite ones, though, were the ones with hair. Long, soft, luxurious hair. I even had, not one, but three whose hair could be pulled out of a hole in her head for even more hair.

I made sure my babies were changed and dressed beautifully every day in the tiny, bitty doll clothes my mother sewed for me. Each doll had it's own wardrobe. There were many days I'd come home from school to find my mom had made a new one. Or two. Did I ever really appreciate it then? I sure do now because, bwahahaha, I can't even sew for my own daughter, much less her dolls. My mom. She rocked.

Anywho, I really liked dressing my dolls. But what I loved was fixing their hair.

My dolls were excellently coiffed. Some had braids, some had ponytails, some just had long, brushed, shiny locks, and some had crazy, wild, done-up-in-some-weird way hair because they were dolls. They didn't care.

They were also very, very still.

My daughter. Not so much.

And her hair. I wouldn't really use long and luxurious to describe it. Soft works though.

When I took my first born son at twelve months for his first haircut I was bummed. Oh sure, he turned into a toddler with that haircut and that was sad, but I was bummed because I had no hair to play with. There was no chance of allowing his hair to grow and style if I wanted others to be sure he was a boy. Ditto second born son. I keep their hair combed, but that's just it. That's all there is to do with them. A quick swipe with the comb, maybe some spray to make the cowlicks lie down and that's that. No. Fun. At all.

But then I had the girl. She wasn't a full five minutes old before my nurse was giving me the short version of Girly-girl Hair-dos for Dummies and I was dreaming of bows and barrettes and I even think I may have told my husband in my morphine-induced euphoria to go RIGHT. THEN to buy some pretty pink bows, but not the big huge bows you strap around the baby's head like some sort of elastic vise because no daughter of mine would wear one of those horrible things.

We all know how that turned out.

Anyway.

I looked forward to girly hair fun since my daughter exited the womb. Pretty much.

But I wasn't expecting this.

My daughter's hair is not thick and lustrous. There's no way in the world a fish tail braid is ever going to stay her thin, barely-there hair. Shoot, I can barely keep a barrette in it.

But when I noticed it was getting long enough to pull through my hands, I found some tiny elastics and figured I'd be all up in the ponytail do. Easy-peasy.

Some say my daughter is quite a doll. I would have to disagree. She moves. And turns her head. And screams. And protests. And what should've been a twenty second job turned into two minute torture. My dolls never behaved this way.

But I did it. And even through the sweat and gritted teeth, I loved it.

The girl. Not quite.




Turns out she can remove tightly wound bands as well as she can bows.

But each day after I dress her in something beautiful from her well-stocked closet, I brush her hair and try it again. And it is fun. Much more challenging than I remembered, but tons of fun. More fun than I ever imagined because not once did any of those lovely-haired dollies turn around and give me a big kiss when I was done.