Charlie's First Haircut

We finally did it: we cut Charlie’s hair! Despite his having a mullet for the past few months—eww, mullet, gross—I’ve put this task off. Why? Because I loved his beautiful baby hair, and for a long time I couldn’t think about cutting his hair without getting close to crying. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

So here Charlie is before the haircut:

Immediately before I cut Charlie’s hair, I cut Chad’s and let Charlie watch. I had hoped that watching his dad get a haircut would help Charlie see it was ok. Not so much.

I started Charlie’s haircut using scissors to remove the mullet—which is the majority of the hair I saved—and the hair at the top of his head. He did not like it. I think I may have tried to cut too much at once causing the scissors to pull his hair a bit. I’m not sure (I am not a trained beautician), but he did fine for the first snip and freaked out more with each subsequent snip.

We had a brief interlude while Chad introduced the electric clipper to Charlie. Charlie was interested but ill at ease.

Then came the tears. Oh so many tears. Charlie did not like the electric clipper. When he spoke, between sobs, he’d try to point to the clipper and say, “vacuum,” or “big noise.” But for the majority of the haircut, Charlie pressed his face into Chad’s chest while he wept and screamed—which is not a position I’d recommend for giving a kid a haircut, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I was not going to leave Charlie’s hair half cut; I’d prefer the mullet and that’s saying something.

Anywho, Charlie’s new haircut didn’t turn out awesome, but it’ll do. We’ll end with some side-by-side comparisons:

Unfortunately, you can also see that he was happy before and not so much after.