It’s that time of year again, and mommy has a whole new list
for her holiday wishes (these, of course, are wishes she’s already fulfilled
herself, but she loves them so much she thought she would share them with you
too!) And, of course, mommy includes her latest naughty book!
And, today, a bonus, a guest post by BFF Molly’s very funny real life (yes, she actually gets up on stage in front of people) comedienne sister Jessie who shares her lessons learned the hard way about one of the
items on my list!!
Here are mommy’s top picks for makin it through the holidays
and everyday!
Favorite new Alcohol (where else would I start???)
1)
Kambucha! This drink has alcohol naturally (who knew that Kambucha could do that?!), but it also
has cleansing properties and you can drink it while you are on a cleanse!! Now, lets not kid ourselves, this will never
come close to Skinnygirl, but when you just need a little something to keep you
from losing your mind while losing your toxins, this will do the trick!
Favorite App(s)
2)
Food onthe table - not only will this keep
track of your grocery lists, it will keep track of which stores you get what
from, whether the store has coupons on items you need, which store has the best
deal that day, and it even will give you recipes if you tell it what you have
in your pantry! If only I
cooked!!!! J
Favorite Website
Books/Magazines
1)
WomanCode – Will change the way you look at food and how it impacts your overall
health and hormones!
2)
The China Study – Will change the way
you look at food and particularly how we are feeding our kids and how to solve
many chronic health issues and change your life simply by changing your diet.
3)
Take Me –
Novella by J. Kenner that concludes the Stark Trilogy. Definitely not the best in the series, but
closes it out nicely.
Bath Product
1)
FairyTales Rosemary Repel Leave in Conditioner – See Jessie’s post below! Plus, it can prevent lice!
Gluten Free Food Product
1)
Cup 4 CupFlour – People often ask me what flour they can use or how they can make
their favorite holiday treats and still be gluten free. This flour is magic and it will be torture
for your waistline (just ask mine that scarfed down 5 mexican wedding cakes and
about 4 tablespoons of batter over the weekend)! D@MNIT!
(you didn’t think I’d make it through the list without at least one swear
word, did you??!!
And now, before I get to Jessie’s post, I just found
out that she has been selected as a finalist in an essay contest sponsored by
Oroweat Bread!! She needs us to help her get more online votes
than the other two California b!tches, I mean finalists. If she wins, she gets a big chunk of dough
(and not the bread kind), and she says she’ll share half with me! Oh, wait, maybe that wasn’t part of the deal.
At any rate, Jessie deserves our support (that means
you Nana), so please vote for her at www.feedyourbetter.com. Hers is Essay #4, a letter that begins “Dear
Diabetes." The contest goes from December
9 – January 3 and you can vote up to once a day. So, vote early and often.
And now, as we enter the season of family gatherings and
family photos, Jessie’s post that beautifully encapsulates the f*&#ing
nightmare that every parent encounters when they try to prevent their
children’s hair from becoming fodder for Ellen’s ugliest family photos contest!
Bonus – you may find some stuff to add
to your wish list!!
Parenting and
Hair-enting
Jessica Westcott
Locked somewhere in the family photo archives is my school
picture from the third grade. Putting aside
for a moment the bizarre Laura Ingalls-inspired prairie dress, and the
pre-orthodontia canine teeth, what truly stands out in the photo is my
hair. It’s the kind of hair styling that
can’t be attributed to a goofy eighties fad, or even to a bad hair day. It is the matted, deeply neglected,
afghan-sheep dog hair of a little girl who refused to let anyone brush, cut,
condition, or style her hair. If you
look closer, you can see something that looks like a paperclip in my hair. What is it?
Why, it’s a paperclip in my hair.
It was put there, under protest, by a volunteer mother, who could not
bear to allow me to be photographed with my hair “looking like that.” Although one might question the woman’s
unilateral decision to use an office supply as a fashion accessory, at least
the paperclip successfully moved my hair out of my face, which was more than my
poor mother could ever persuade me to do.
And now, Karma, that ironic bitch, has come back to haunt me
in the form of my children.
Just washing my four year-old daughter’s hair requires the
conviction of a steely-eyed soldier heading into combat. She loves baths, but when it comes time to
shampoo her hair, and especially to rinse her hair, she screams and thrashes
like she is being water-boarded. Sometimes,
just for fun, while I rinse her hair I yell, “Where is Osama Bin Laden?!”
Her hair is thick and buoyant and wavy. It’s a soft honey color with the kind of
perfect sunshine highlights that children effortlessly achieve and salon
stylists charge thousands to approximate.
Truly, her hair would look like spun gold, if she would only let me
BRUSH IT. Instead, she goes to bed with
her hair wet and uncombed, and we wrestle several minutes every morning while I
cajole, threaten, and overpraise her for the 2-3 minutes she will tolerate me
brushing out her hair.
Here are photos of my husband brushing my daughter’s
hair. This was a good day.
After the battle royale has quieted some, I lamely shove in
a barrette. I use a barrette because
Scotch tape, staples, and rope are not sturdy enough. The barrette provides little aesthetic
improvement, but it does show that I TRIED to comb her hair, in the event
someone reports me to Child Protective Services. During the rest of her day, my daughter’s
hair serves as a receptacle for little souvenirs – a little paint from school,
some yogurt from lunch, sometimes even a stick or some grass from the
yard. I’m pretty sure she hides spare
change in there.
At the end of the day my daughter’s head looks something like this:
 |
| Rockin the Medusa Hairstyle |
My two year-old son presents a different kind of
challenge. Mercifully, his hair is
short. But, the millisecond he sees me
whip out the comb, he turns into the Roadrunner, and I become Wile E.
Coyote. He looks at me with an impish,
mischievous smile as if to say, “Ok, Lady.
Let’s get ready to rumble.
Meep. Meep.” Then, he takes off running down the hall,
full sprint, giggling maniacally. What
is it about two year-old boys that enables them to run so fast? His little legs are a blur of running speed;
he leaves skid marks on the carpet. It
usually takes me five minutes, and several laps around the kitchen counter just
to catch him. When I finally do catch up
to him, I have to harness him in a half-nelson with my left arm, while I
frantically brush with the right, all while he flails his head in every
direction like a hysterical chicken. Oh,
and did I mention the screaming?
Lest you think that he is the easy one because of the short
hair, let me share the story of his most recent haircut. He flat-out refused to wear a salon cape, so
the child was COVERED in hair by the end of the cut. I’ve known middle-aged Mediterranean men with
less hair on their back. He was so
wiggly and uncooperative while she trimmed his hair, I was certain he was going
to get his ear snipped off. Next
haircut, I might actually bring a cooler in case I need to transport any
detached body parts to the emergency room.
Because he continued to raise holy hell while the stylist trimmed his
bangs, the end result looked something like this:
Moreover, my poor little flaxen-haired guy has the Mt.
Everest of cowlicks. Most days he has
some of this going on:
 |
| We affectionately call this the "cowlick from Hell!" |
I know it’s possible to get my kids’ hair to look nice. I know it because I see them all the time at
parks and schools – well-groomed children with perfectly combed, neatly-styled
hair. Sometimes I see little girls with
elaborate, elegant braids and twists, and I’m nothing short of astonished. The hair parts alone on some of these girls
are beautiful enough to make you weep!
The lines are so perfect it looks like the hair was parted by Moses
himself. Seriously -- how do the parents
do it? Do they use some sort of special protractor? Perhaps they use one of the tools I see at
Home Depot and have no idea how to use – a “belt sander” or a “plumb bob,” for
example.
For a long time, I simply assumed that children with
beautiful hairdos had been given some kind of sedative. As far as I know, since the time of their
birth, my children have never --not once -- sat still enough for that kind of
hair art.
One time, at my daughter’s ballet class, I noticed one of these beautifully coiffed children. The little girl’s hair was long, lustrous, and tightly braided in a complicated, multi-tiered crown. It looked something like this:
Aghast, I asked the child’s mother, “How do you get her to
sit still while you do her hair?” Perhaps the Mom was slightly creeped out that
I was staring at her child’s head like it was some sort of carnival side show
oddity, but the lady was not particularly polite. In fact, she gave me a disdainful, slightly
concerned look, clearly pondering whether I was too mentally deficient to
safely parent a child. Then she said,
coolly, “I just give her a book to read.”
Oh. Well. That makes perfect sense.
Are you kidding me?!
There is no book on earth entertaining enough to quiet the screams if I
attempted a hairdo like that on my kids.
Disney princesses could spoon-feed my daughter ice cream while puppies
cartwheeled in front of her, and she would still wail like I was beating her
with the hairbrush instead of running it through her hair.
I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, least of
all what other people think about my children.
But, I can’t help it. When they
look like ragamuffin feral children with hair tha looks like an animal has
nested there, it reflects badly on me.
More to the point, I don’t want them to look back at pictures of
themselves and think, “I know I had a mother -- what in God’s name was that
woman thinking when she let us out of the house with that hair?”
I do take comfort in knowing that I am not alone. There are many of us out there -- Mommy and
Daddy hair warriors --- my sisters and brothers in the struggle. Every morning before school, we fight the
good fight, desperately trying to keep our children from sporting a head of
unkempt mange. For my wary compatriots
out there, I list for you here some products and tools that I’ve found helpful
in the daily battle to tame my children’s tresses:
The Arsenal
1.
Fuzzy Duck products, especially the
conditioner. Conditioner? Hell yes, conditioner. For the love of God, conditioner. It’s a pain to do the second rinse, and I’ve
often succumbed to the temptation of the all-in-one shampoo and
conditioner. Don’t do it. My daughter will rarely let me comb her hair
after a wash, and the next day, the lack of conditioning combined with the
slight wave makes for a complete matted disaster. Fuzzy Duck products are specifically made for
kids with difficult hair, and they forgo a lot of the yucky chemicals.
2.
Mason Pearson Childs Sensitive BristleBrush. This is the only brush my
daughter will allow near her hair. It’s
pink, small, and has course, soft bristles.
This is the only brush she will accept, and she calls it “the soft
brush.” Any other brush in the universe
(and believe me, I’ve tried many) she disdainfully calls “the hurt brush.” This is also the most obscenely expensive
hairbrush I’ve ever encountered. We only
own it because it was gifted to us by a wealthy family friend. Notwithstanding that the thing is priced as
if its handcrafted by leprechauns from rare unicorn tuft, it works wonders on
tangles, makes hair shiny, and is really worth the investment for a picky
senso-head.
3. A squirt bottle. This one may be obvious to many of you, but I didn’t know this trick until someone shared it with me. I fill the bottle with a solution of 1 part detangling spray and 3 parts water. I spray it generously on my kids’ hair, and sometimes even let my daughter spray her own hair, which makes her feel like a fancy lady. It’s great for taming weird bumps and cowlicks and allows for easy dispersion of nasty tangles. It also works wonders as a prep for ponytails or braids, if you’re brave enough to attempt such things.
4.
Fairy Tales Rosemary Repel Shampoo. The idea of lice makes me want to run for the
hills, throw up, and then run some more.
We use this shampoo regularly as a prophylactic measure, and I swear by
it. My daughter was one of the few
scalps spared when her old preschool had a really nasty infestation of lice – I
attribute it to this stuff. Also, I tell
my children that sharing hairbrushes and hats with other children is tantamount
to throwing poop at Santa. They may be
scarred for life, but at least I won’t have to burn the house down because it’s
infested with nasty scalp-chewing vermin.
One last word: You
can buy some overly-priced detangling brushes that boast magical tear-free
detangling. Save your money. They look and feel like the kind of brush you
would use to comb flies out of a horse tail.
Once, I let my daughter brush my hair with our special detangling brush
and I yelped out in pain. With a
slightly smug look on her face, she told me to sit still and act like a big
girl.
No comments:
Post a Comment