Street urchin

Lately I have been having one heck of a time dealing with Mallory's hair. When I have a barrette in it, it looks adorable. And then, about 30 seconds later, she pulls it out. No matter how many times I put it back in, she takes it out again. In fact, she has taken to surreptitiously checking her hair throughout the day for stray barrettes, even after she's long since plucked it out. Because this seems to be a losing battle, and there are only so many hours in the day for me to fight her on this, as well as the fact that every time she rips the barrette out, she takes a good chunk of her beautiful hair along with it... I have taken to not even bothering anymore. Which was all fine and well several months ago, when she looked like this:But now that her hair is longer, she looks like a real ragamuffin when there is nothing keeping her hair contained (as evidenced above). And the thing is, I am terribly vain about her hair. I just think it is such a beautiful colour, and a standout feature of hers. So I hate to see it looking ratty. I have a vision of what it will look like when it is a little longer, a little thicker and a little more even (though I refuse to get it cut to even it out, not yet - I don't want to age her before my very eyes.) It's just the awkward time from now til then that we have to ride out.

So this morning I pulled out the big guns. I set up a decoy and went to work on her hair. I plunked her in her high chair, and gave her a sippy cup of juice, which she loves to guzzle in the morning; and I snuck up behind her with a comb (which she hates) and some elastics, and I gave her a Pebbles top-of-her-head ponytail. When I was done, she looked like this, minus the dinosaur and sabre-toothed tiger:

About thirty seconds later she figured out that something was up, and the ponytail was already cockeyed by the time I left for work, but those elastics hold pretty tight. Much better than the barrettes, anyway. Goodness knows what she will look like by the end of the day, but I am hoping that this is the temporary measure it takes to keep her hair relatively neat and relatively out of her eyes, while it grows out. One day, when she looks like this, it will all be worth it: Except that I hope she will be wearing more clothes.