Bad haircut

John and I sort of "had it" with Mary's hair always hanging in her face and her complete lack of interest in combing it or keeping it nice. She's been trying to grow it out, but it's just a straggly mess. So we talked her into getting some of it cut off.

Saturday morning I rushed her in to the SuperCheap place--it was just a few stores down from the CellPhoneStore where I wanted to take my suddenly dead phone to get it looked at. Well, the wait ended up being longer than they said (and the CellPhoneStore had moved out! The nerve!), so Mary and I passed the time perusing the haircut books trying to pick out something that she would like. The kid who two days prior was almost crying over the fact that I said she needed to get a "good trim" as her hair was so damaged, and I wanted her to have something easier to take care of, was now, "Oh, I don't care" about the style of her hair. And then moved to, "Oh...whatever."

So, when her time was finally up (and I was getting nervous by this time as she had a softball game in about 45 minutes--in another part of town--and she didn't even have her uniform on yet....), I gave her to the stylist, showed her the length Mary and I agreed on (just below her shoulders) and then said, "If she wants bangs, it's completely up to her, I don't care," and I walked away (to put up with wiggly Izzy and a set of brothers who were pummeling each other in the waiting area while grandma was getting her hair cut--fun!).

Well, Mary decided on bangs. ("It's kind of fun to try something different!" she said.) And Izzy and I sat there and watched the lady cut them. And I immediately thought, "WHY was I so trusting to let her pick her own hairstyle! I HATE dealing with bangs! And WHY is that lady cutting them so short? And...AUGH!"

Well, we got home, John rushed Mary off to her game (for which I was mistaken--it started a half hour EARLIER than I thought). I took Keith to his game. We all met up later (@#$% inconvenient not having a cell phone!), and John had to tell me, "I hate her hair. SOMETHING must be done about her hair."

Well...WHAT can be done now? The bangs are CUT, and there is no getting those straggly pieces of hair back. And I don't think anything can be done to fix how short they look. And I'm afraid of having someone cut more off the sides (That's part of the problem--a year ago, we had the sides cut to "frame" her face--and those chunks of hair just really make the bangs look stupid. But we want to grow them OUT now, so surely cutting them even shorter would be counterproductive?) and making it look worse. And, Mary actually LIKES her hair (and she got a lot of compliments on it at her game--probably everybody was just thrilled they could see her face). And...we'll just have to start pulling the sides back (it DOES look pretty decent like that)...and wait for everything to grow back.

I should have known better than to mess with it. I should have known better than to let her pick bangs or no bangs. I should have known to just stop at "Please clean up the scraggly ends."

Two years. It'll probably take at least two years.

*sigh*