Adopted for Life: Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair, Hair

Annie's about to start another quarter of school at CalPOLY San Luis Obispo on Monday. Victoria decided it might be a good idea to spend some stress-free time with her before studies steal her mind for the next ten weeks. I gladly agreed to stay home and take care of the Willow and Poppy, and of course Barret. I love these special times with the kids because we're able to connect in a different dimension than when their mother is around. Don't get me wrong, I am a far cry from a substitute for Victoria, and all three kids remind me of that in their own special way, especially when it comes to meal times. (Dad's cuisine is always a lot simpler than Mom's.)

There's another very practical way in which I could never make up for what Victoria does, and that' combing the girl's hair. Poppy's is easy; it's short and bobbed, so a few strokes of the comb and it falls right into place. The biggest challenge I have with Poppy's hair is making sure I put the clip in the right spot. Even then I don't think it's placed as perfectly as Victoria's.

Now Willow's hair is an entirely different matter. Whenever she wakes up from her sleep, whether night-time or a nap, we always say she looks like a dark version of The Adam's Family character "It". You can hardly make out her face with all of the hair covering her features, and it's usually a matted mess. Now "It" on The Adam's Family also had hair that covered "its" face, but it was always neatly groomed. Not Willow's. So one of my biggest fears about being a stay-at-home dad when Victoria's gone is having to take Willow out in public without her hair looking as cute as the perfect pig-tails Victoria pulls; you know, the symmetrical kind that flare out and bounce every time Willow takes a step? I'm tellin' ya, she doesn't get much cuter than that. But as Clint Eastwood once said, "A man's got to know his limitations", and I certainly know mine when it comes to the girl's hair. So I don't even try to mimic Victoria's fashion style on Willow, and I just go for the simplistic look. If I could, I'd let it flow down naturally with a little clip near her forehead to keep the hair out of her face. But that doesn't last too long with a bouncy Willow-tree, so I had to come up with a different solution. Combing the hair is hard enough because I hurt her poor little scalp with every stroke. She's brave and doesn't cry, but I know she's writhing in pain from my less-than-delicate manly ways of getting tangles out of that matted mess. Once all of the hair is knot free, I have the challenge of figuring out what I'm going to do next. Since pig-tails are out, I decided I'd try something new this weekend and I put it in a ponytail. It wasn't a ponytail made with a rubber band, but rather one pinched together with one of those ponytail clips that squeezes tight and then snaps into place. I figured I finally came up with a good solution to dealing with Willow's hair in Victoria's absence, until... she got in her car seat and decided to put her head back on the rest thereby catching the clip and pulling her hair all out of place. I give up, and have decided that she's going to have to look ragged while Mom's out. She'll remain my signature poster-child for why dad's (especially me) just can't make up for the wonder and the beauty of a mom.

Poppy's handling Victoria's absence fairly well in contrast to previous departures, but she did exhibit a morose affect when going to bed tonight, knowing it would still be another 24 hours before her favorite person in the whole wide world walked across that threshold of 15 Hartwood Court.