Hair Apparent

One of the joys of being a parent is being responsible, at least for now, for the care of someone else's hair--My friend Stephanie has also recently blogged about this same topic. Check it out here :-)

Our daughter, Kyra, was born with a full head of hair, and thankfully kept most of it. And unlike some children who don't visit the hairstylist until they're getting ready for kindergarten, she had her bangs trimmed at just 16 months old by our dear hairstylist/friend, Carol. She (Carol) did admit afterwards, though, that she wasn't very comfortable cutting children's hair because little ones don't always sit still, and scissors are scissors.

So when it was time to cut the bangs again, I decided to take Kyra to someone else and preserve Carol's friendship :-) There is a Great Clips not far from us in the Bethany shopping mall, so I decided to try them out. If you've ever been to a Great Clips type of salon, you know that unless you want to wait for a particular stylist, you just get whoever is free. Unfortunately for us, our particular stylist was smack-dab in the middle of having a royal "Alexander" day ("no good, very bad, I'm going to Australia" day). Not only did she act like we were completely wasting her time, but she did a really poor job at trimming Kyra's bangs. Needless to say, we were not going to go back there any time soon.

Fast forward to last week. Kyra's bangs once again needed trimming--she was even complaining that her hair was in her eyes. While Christmas shopping at Streets of Tanasbourne, we'd noticed a new exclusive hair salon just for kids called Pigtails & Crewcuts. Just peeking in the windows was exciting! All the stations had cool chairs like fire engines & cars for the kids to sit in while getting their hair cut, and you could see they went out of their way to make the experience fun. But I thought, "I bet a haircut costs an arm & a leg!" I went home & looked them up on the web--What's this? Only $5 for a bang cut? That's exactly what Great Clips charges, and you know this place will cater to kids :-)

However, when we walked in on a Thursday morning, we were told there were 4 clients ahead of us, at 15 minutes each. For all you non-math types, that's an HOUR wait!!! When I told the receptionist thanks but no thanks, she had the audacity to look at me like I was crazy. What would have been crazy would be to wait there for an hour, with a 2 yr old, even with all their cool stuff.

By this time, I was pretty frustrated, as we had endured the pouring down rain, and still no haircut. As a last resort, I decided to try the Great Clips over by the Walker/158th Fred Meyer. I told myself if there was any kind of wait, we'd just go home, and try again another day.

We walked in, and were immediately cheerfully greeted by one of their stylists. When I asked the wait time, I was told, "Less than 5 minutes." Yee Haw! And let me tell you, our stylist, Angela, was just that, an angel with shears. She gave Kyra her squirt bottle to play with, actually laughed when Kyra accidentally sprayed her full in the face with water, and she gave her an absolutely adorable cut. And all for $5!

Maybe we'll try Pigtails & Crewcuts again sometime, simply to say we did it. But with a $3 off coupon for our next visit to Great Clips, and knowing what we know about them, it's really hard to pass that up.

Happy Monday, friends!
k~