Milestone For Us

Recently, our family, rather my youngest, reached a milestone.

Wait for it... The first official haircut.

Firsts are a huge thing for families as is in ours. While I suck at documenting such firsts, I do remember them fondly. I guess this blog post is an official documenting of my youngest's first haircut.

Now, I know haircuts aren't that big of a deal, really. But my youngest got his first haircut at 3 1/2 years old. Yes, 3 1/2 years!

So, why did it take me so long to cut his hair? I knew in my heart of hearts that he was going to be the last one. The baby in the family. I needed to hold on to some of that babyhood for as long as I could. I wanted to stretch out the firsts as best I could.

Of course, I stay home with the kids so I also knew that I had the time to comb his hair when needed. Also, in the past, we've waited until our other boys have turned at least a year old before cutting their hair. My oldest two were about 18 months old when we first cut their hair. Yes, I still have their hair in ziploc bags, as I do have my youngest's. When my youngest, turned one year old, he had a good bit of hair but he was so small that it just didn't feel right to cut his hair. So, we waited and waited and waited.

I then decided to wait until he turned 5 years old to cut his hair. Well, as you can tell, that isn't going to happen. His hair got so long and thick that the joy of combing his hair was quickly fading. He was used to getting his hair combed but he would start saying ouch whenever I had to untangle it. His hair is so curly, thanks to me, that no matter what I did the tangles would always be there. But he was a good sport about getting it combed. Also, he was ready for it. I talked to him about getting his hair cut and he was really excited about it.

I made an appointment with my hairdresser and off we went. On this wonderful adventure of getting his haircut. The whole family went to support him and make him feel great. My oldest was so excited to see him and commented on how much he know looks like the rest of his brothers. It is uncanny to see how much resemblance they have to each other. Just yesterday, I had a flashback of when my oldest was 2 years old when I saw my youngest out of the corner of my eye.

When we got to the salon, he climbed up on the chair and sat like the big boy he is. I was so proud of him. My heart swelled at thousand times with pride, joy and sadness.

Proud because he was so ready for this and taking it so easy.

Joy because you could see the excitement in his little face before and after his haircut.

Sadness, well, because his features have changed and I know that slowly but surely I am loosing the little baby that I had. I need to learn to let go of that and embrace the big boy that he is becoming.

This is how long his hair was. You can see how thick it is.

That first snip. He didn't even flinch.

Here we are.