sheared

It's been happening more and more lately. Someone passes by and notices Dennis and tells us "She's so beautiful". He is always dressed in boy clothes, but still they make the mistake of assuming that he's a girl because he is such a beautiful child. Yes, he has long eyelashes, and yes, his hair curls at the ends, but he never wears pink or purple, and his baby accessories (stroller, diaper bag, shoes) are all boy colors. So Dennis got his first haircut today. He was sporting a rather cute baby mullet before, but it was time to give him a little trim to preserve his gender identity.

Gran and I did the deed, and it was a sudden decision. I suggested at 2:15 that maybe we should cut his hair today, and by 3:15, those straggly baby curls on the back of his neck were tucked into an envelope to go in his baby book. We decided that strapping him in the high chair was the safest bet, but he knew something was up when no food was forthcoming. He regarded the scissors with serious interest. I'm sure he was thinking of how to get them away from us so he could run with them. Gran began combing his hair, which made him giggle, and then we took some pictures of us holding the scissors near his hair. When we began to actually cut, he whipped his head around to see what in the world we were doing. He kept whipping his head from side to side, looking to see where we were going with those scissors. I made the first cut, and it was a sloppy one that took a good bit more off over his ears than I intended to. This made me pretty nervous, so I turned the scissors back over to the expert (Gran, not Dennis) to even out what I had done. She declared that he needed a distraction, so I searched around and found some maraschino cherries in her refrigerator. Turns out that Dennis loves cherries, and he was so enthralled with tasting the cherry and then taking it out and looking at it and then tasting it again, slobbering red sticky juice all over his bare chest and shorts and legs and high chair. It was just the distraction we needed, and we'd finished the haircut before he'd finished the second cherry.

I was concerned about the cuteness factor. He was so cute with his long shaggy hair in the back (still thin on top!) that I worried that I might be taking away one of his cutest features. That wasn't the case. He looks so much better with his hair trimmed, so much like a little boy! It's neater not being so straggly, and the hair on the back of his head is still soft, and there's still plenty of it. I needn't have worried. He is doubly cute now, almost disgustingly so. Everywhere we went this evening, people noticed him and he gave them a real show.

He's discovered how to really work his cuteness. He spies an unwitting stranger and says "hey" loud enough so that they can't help but notice him. He gives them the big blue eyed stare followed by a lift of his eyebrow, a slight ducking of his head, all followed with a big wattage smile. He practically bats his eyelashes. It works every time. People tell him how cute he is, and he laughs and smiles at them, looks away, then repeats the routine. He is irresistible and he knows it. We are not immune to it ourselves!

Today he said "cold" and "toes" and "shop" and finally (after much prompting) "shopping". He correctly identified Mommy's nose, mouth, ear, and eyes by jabbing his chubby little finger on my face near the appropriate part. He's learning about his fingers and toes. Just after Janet left today he said "bye, Gigi" very clearly. He tossed his pacifier earlier, and his daddy asked him, "Where did your pacifier go?". He replied with something that sounded exactly like "on the floor".

Tonight at dinner, a chair slid and he toppled down onto a very hard floor, and we panicked. Everyone around us did, too. He's fine, actually, and he didn't get a red mark or knot or bruise on his head. He hit butt first, but his head hit the floor afterward. He cried pretty hard for about 2 minutes, but then he was ok. There are no lasting effects except one very scared Mommy. I was so afraid that he was hurt, then I was afraid he'd damaged some part of his very brilliant brain, but he identified all those parts of my face after the fall so I am reassured. Except now I think of how fragile life is, and how fast accidents happen, and it pains me that I will not be able to always keep him from getting hurt. I will certainly do my very absolute best, but there will be falls and bumps and topples and bruises and skinned knees. It's all part of growing up. And maybe that's why it's so hard on me. He's really growing up.