Home Hair-Do

So, you may notice something new about Brianna in the latest pix I post of her....she has a new haircut, and it's one of her own design. Yep, Bree has now done that classic kid move, given herself a home chop job on her hair!! AACK!

I suppose it was really my fault though. See, Brianna has had this fascination with scissors for awhile now. I use them quite often...cooking shears in the kitchen and then I've been sewing quite a bit as well so I have fabric scissors. Not to mention, sometimes I use scissors when Brianna and I do art projects from time to time. Well, every time I have a pair out Bree just is hooked to my side, watching raptly and asking can she use them and etc.? This usually ends in tears when I have to say no. Finally the other day I thought to myself, "Well, she IS almost 3 and maybe I could buy her a tiny pair of safety scissors, just for craft time and only when I'm there to supervise her." Yeah, famous last thought on safety scissors.....

So I bought her a pair of safety scissors. She was extremely thrilled and we had a talk about them being sharp, only touching the handle, etc. (And actually Bree is very good about that stuff, very responsible for her age I'd say.) So, the first day she owned them she happily cut up some construction paper and then glue-sticked it back onto another paper. "Great." I think. "That's nice."

The next day my parents arrived in town and Grammy Dee Dee and Bree played with clay. Bree has a little clay set that is a barber shop. (You already see where this is going don't you??) In the set you make the little clay people and animals grow hair by pushing the clay out the holes in their head. Then you use little plastic scissors to trim the hair off and start again. After a few minutes Bree was insisting that her little plastic scissors weren't working very well and that she wanted to cut the clay hair with her safety scissors. I thought "Sure, why not?" and let her do it. I assume this must have given Brianna a big idea... Later in the day as both Grammy and I were distracted with making dinner the clay play stuff was left sitting on the kitchen table, along with the safety scissors. And...before you could stop her Bree grabbed up her scissors and had hacked off some of her bangs. She had the scissors raised again to cut off another piece when all four adults were going "NO! NO!" This of course made her immediately burst into tears. So, there we were with half her bangs cut really pretty short. In her defense I had let her bangs get really long and they were probably hanging in her eyes and bugging her...(the plan was to grow them out so she had no bangs but...new plan now I guess).

We ended up taking her to get the bangs evened out and I'm still getting used to the new do. It's not my favorite but I guess that's what I get. For one thing, I feel pretty stupid buying her the dang safety scissors in the first place (esp. at her age), and for another I should have anticipated (esp. in light of the clay play activity) that this idea would occur to her and given her the "We only cut paper." talk much sooner. Oh well...I suppose it really could have been worse. She didn't chop all the way to the scalp or anything or poke her own eye out. Word to the wise to anyone out there though...safety scissors are sharp enough to cut hair!!