The End of an Hair-A

Since Tommy's birth, his hair has been his thing. In the first few calm minutes after his birth, I remember looking down at the top of his head and thinking, Oh, he has way more hair than Luke. I think I spent the first 24 hours of Tommy's life with my nose and mouth buried in his hair.
After his baths, it would fluff up and be so delicious.

He never really went through the bald baby stage. Instead, he just lost some off the sides and had this totally rocking fauxhawk.

But of course, as he got older his hair got longer. But it's so cute! It's so Tommy! Except that, everyone started calling him a girl. And I mean EVERYONE, including the phlebotomist at the hospital who, hilariously, walked in, looked at his chart and said, "Oh, I think I'm in the wrong room." And I said, No, we're waiting a blood draw, to which she replied, "Oh, okay. Could you put your daughter Thomas on the bed?" Yes. She thought we'd named our girl THOMAS. So many people called him a girl on Halloween that I just stopped correcting them, figuring that as long as they were handing him (me) candy, I was okay with the gender confusion.
While I don't think girls need long hair and boys need short hair by ANY stretch of the imagination, I hated constantly correcting people and I hated the looks on their faces where they either a) felt bad for putting a foot in mouth, or b) looked at us like we were crazy dirty hippies for not cutting our kid's hair. Plus, it keeps getting in his eyes and tangling in the back and I kind of feel sorry for the poor kid. (But selfishly, I love his hair and still bury my mouth and nose in it every single night.)
Before we cut his hair, I had to bring back the fauxhawk one last time. Can you blame me? (And then, yes, I had to edit them in such a way that his hair is the focal point.)


(And then I cried for five minutes about how he won't look like my Tommy anymore and Shane stared at me like I had three heads.)
Not to be outdone by my tears, Tommy positively wailed through his first hair cut (unlike his brother, who smiled). At first, he was like, Hey! A sucker! This isn't so bad.

And then the reality set in, and he threw a fit that would've made any 14 year old girl proud. He screamed and cried the entire time, as if his world was ending. I don't usually take pictures of my kids crying, but SERIOUSLY? If I had the time and money to be getting my hair cut tonight, I would most certainly not waste it crying.


Afterward, we went out to dinner and I had to hold him the entire time, because putting him in a high chair resulted in frantic screaming as if he was certain someone was going to sneak up on him with a pair of flashing, silver scissors.

Oh, Tommy.