February pictures

Blanket fort/popcorn fun:

The Valentine's Day craziness:

New haircut:

We had been eating airbread for a while because it was so busy, and I finally got around to making homemade whole wheat bread. As soon as it got out of the oven, Heidi said, "Mom, can I have a piece of bread right now? I know I'll get burned, but I don't care." I think we went through a loaf and a half that day. I make good bread.

Tut, tut, looks like rain!

Playing outside:

And in February, Kevin learned how to ride his bike! (Skip to the end of the video where he manages a nice long ride.)

Heidi's haircut

I don't think I mentioned yet that I cut Heidi's hair short about a month ago. She had been asking for a short haircut like her friend Avery's for quite a while. I've trimmed her hair a couple of times before, I was a little reluctant to do a short haircut because I was afraid I would mess it up. If you do a short haircut there's not a lot of wiggle room for mistakes. But one day I went temporarily insane and decided to go for it. I was shaking the entire time, and Heidi was giggling with excitement the entire time.

When I was done cutting everything to the right length I checked to make sure both sides were even and realized that one side was shorter than the other, so then I had to try to fix that. Once I was done cutting I pulled the hair away from her head a little and cut the ends at a slant so that they would have a little bit of layering. That's my trick for hiding my mistakes. It's not a perfect haircut, but the mistakes are only really noticeable to me, and it looks darling.

I promise Heidi loves her haircut. In this picture she was pouting because she didn't want her picture taken.

I had to fix a couple of spots the next day.

I have actually really enjoyed her short hair because it's so easy to take care of. It used to be a pain to brush her hair because it would get so tangled and often she would get food in it. Now it just takes a few seconds to brush and there is a lot less crying about it. I still miss her long hair because it was so pretty, but I think for now short hair is a better arrangement for us.

Heidi's first on-purpose hair cut

Heidi's hair was getting really long and I loved the length, but at the same time it was starting to look sort of scraggly and it was hard to brush it because the unevenness of the ends made it so they had lots of tiny tangles. I've been contemplating cutting her hair myself for months, but I was scared to try and have it be a disaster. I've seen some awful hack jobs on little girls and I didn't want to inflict that on Heidi. But yesterday as I was thinking about it I realized that most of the problems I've seen have to do with messing up the bangs, and since I wasn't planning to do bangs on Heidi (I have no desire to deal with bangs) that wouldn't be an issue. I watched a lot of youtube videos about how to do a basic straight-across haircut and that gave me a pretty good idea of how to do a decent girl's haircut.

This was a good youtube video that showed how to make the hair all the same length by starting in the back and making a guide which you use to judge the length for the rest of the hair.



Heidi's hair had a lot of different layers because it's kind of grown in spurts, so I chose a layer that went to about her shoulders and decided to aim for that to be the length of her hair. After I had cut everything straight across like in the video (it took a while for me to work up the courage to make the first cut), I used the tip at the end of this tutorial to pull pieces of hair back and cut them at an angle to get them to stack a little instead of having all the hair be one length. I think this was a good move because it seems to give more character and body to the hair in back.

And here are the results!

Before:

I know, Heidi, I'm a little nervous too!

After:

This is when her hair had mostly dried but was still a little damp.

And here's how Heidi's hair looked this morning. It looked like that when she woke up! All I had to do was brush it a little bit and stick the ponytail and clip in. So much easier than dealing with all of the tiny snarls and cowlicks that she had before. It feels so nice to run my fingers through her hair in back now because it feels so healthy and soft now that it's all the same length.

The change is most obvious in back where I evened everything out. I probably cut off 2-3 inches in the back. The front was a lot shorter than the back because she lost a lot of hair in front as a newborn, and it's still got some catching up to do, so I didn't change much in the front.

Ryan and Kevin got hair cuts this weekend too. Heidi was a little disappointed that I didn't use clippers on her like I always do for Ryan and Kevin. She insisted that she hasn't gotten a hair cut yet because the razor never came out. Personally, I'm not inclined to give her a pixie cut right now. : )

Chopped my hair!

I've been thinking of cutting my hair short again for a long time, but I was a little nervous because I didn't want to get a bad haircut. With long hair, at least you can cut a little more off if it turns out badly, but if you cut it short there's not a lot more to cut off. Finally I was getting so tired of my long hair because it was always in my way and it took forever to wash it, so I decided it was definitely time. I've had some bad short haircuts in the past, so I wanted to find someone who knew what they were doing. I had heard of a salon here called Moshi Moshi and I knew that some of my friends had liked it, so I decided to go try it out.

Ryan took a picture of my long braid as I walked out the door:

And here's the final result:

This is how the stylist fixed it. I have wavy hair, and I've never been able to figure out how to use that to my advantage. She did some scrunching and used some kind of cream/gel stuff and made it look cute. I tried to do what she did after I took a shower and it didn't work so well, but that's what always happens. I've straightened it a few times, and I like how that looks. It will take me a while to figure out how to style it, I guess, but so far it seems like it's pretty easy and fast to fix my hair. It was so great to wash my hair without it taking 45 minutes!

When I got home from Moshi Moshi, Kevin laughed at me and said, "Hair." Then later he wanted me to put my hair back on. I had saved it so that I could donate it, and he was pointing at the bag. We used to play this game where I would put flip all my hair over my head so it brushed his face, and then I would cover my face with it so he had to look for me.

4th haircut

Kevin's hair was getting nice and long and I really liked it, but it was a little shaggy in the back and around the ears, so I just wanted to trim those parts up a little bit and keep it longer. It didn't seem like it would be that hard, but once I started working on it I realized it was a little harder than I thought and I lost confidence, plus Kevin was wiggling too much for me to have enough control to use the scissors the way I needed to. By that point I had already done enough cutting that I had to do something to finish it up, so I gave up and got out the clippers and did #8 all over his head like I always do. Maybe later I'll get around to doing the back a little shorter. I'm a little sad about his hair, although it does look nice.

Here is what his hair looked like before:

And here is after the haircut:

He looks older, too.

another haircut

No, sadly, I still haven't gotten a haircut.

Saturday I cut Ryan's hair for the first time. Following the instructions that came with the clippers, I began with a 6 on the bottom near his neck, then tried the 7 a little higher up. All I could think was that it looked really strange and I had no idea what I was doing. Then we realized how long Ryan's hair was on top and decided to do an 8 there. I ended up doing an 8 all over his head, and then redoing the 6 and 7 and doing things around the ears and taking off the neck hair. Next time I'm going to ignore the instructions and just start with the 8 in the first place. Once it was all a manageable length, it was much easier. Considering that it was my first time giving a haircut, I think it turned out pretty nicely. And, best of all, he didn't go to the barbershop and get his hair cut 1/8 of an inch long like he normally does (which is why we bought the clippers).

Ryan is great. There was no worrying about me messing up his hair or not doing a good job. I guess we figured that the worst thing that could happen would be that we would have to just cut it all 1/8 of an inch long, which is what he would have asked the barber to do anyway. I'm grateful that he's so supportive. Honestly, it wasn't me saying I wanted to try cutting his hair and Ryan being reluctant. It was Ryan saying it was time for a haircut and me being scared to death that I'd ruin it and he'd hate it.

Tiny hairs all over the bathroom counter provided a good excuse to clean the counter. I'm always amazed at how little time it takes if I just make myself do it.

Ryan refuses to cut my hair. If people are impressed by my long hair, maybe they don't realize that I haven't had it cut at all since a month before Kevin was born. Other things just seem more important, and I still need to find somewhere better than Supercuts without spending more than $30.

I also managed to vacuum on Saturday. It would be a much faster process if I didn't have to deal with Kevin throwing toys all over the floor as fast as I try to pick them up, because then I could clear the floor and vacuum it and be done.

In a Don Aslett book I read a long time ago, he talked about how you should clean your bathroom and vacuum the floor every day. In some ways it makes sense because if you do it every day it would be a quick process. I learned pretty quickly when I worked as a custodian at BYU that you don't have to mow the carpet every time you vacuum--most days you can just get the visible stuff. But I still feel like I would be a slave to the housework if I tried to do it that way.