CSI: Special Hair Unit

My friend once told me about walking into her dining room to find her daughters under the table, sitting in a pile of hair. "It looked like a crime scene," she described. I now know what she means.

The other day, I felt that sudden sense of "uh-oh." Maybe it was mother's instinct, maybe it was just my subconscious picking up on the silence from the other room, but I knew something was wrong. I ran into the living room, where the twins were playing around a small box. Both of the girls looked guiltily up at me, and spoke quickly in rehearsed voices that were a tad loud, a bit too forced in cheerfulness: "We cut our Barbie's hair!" One daughter waved a pair of scissors at me as if to prove the truth of their statement. See, Mom? I have the scissors right here! 

The odd thing was, no Barbies in sight. Also? The twins are NOT allowed to play with scissors. EVER. You may think this rule was enacted for their physical safety, but it's more about my sanity. Too many important papers, beautiful fabrics, and socks have been destroyed by twins with scissors.

I looked into the little box that sat between them. It was full of hair. Not Barbie hair, human hair. "Stand up!" I ordered. "Turn around!" At this point in the story, a good CSI agent would whip out some photographic evidence of the bloodless trauma that occurred in our house that day. But I'm not a forensic specialist, just a distraught mother. I wasn't thinking about documenting the moment with my camera.

One twin—the instigator of the entire mess—confessed that she had cut off the ends of her own braids. Actually, she didn't so much confess as hang her head silently in agreement while her sister screamed, "She did it! She did it!" She'd snipped off the beautiful 3" golden curl hanging from each plait, and then turned on her sister, whose long hair happened to be swinging loose and free in the wind.

Not only are the twins terrible liars, they are terrible beauticians. Entire chunks were chopped from the bangs, sides, and back of the victim's hair.

The silver lining of the story is the very next day, the girls' grandmother was returning from vacation and would be spending the night at our house. Grandma Vickie is a professional hairstylist who owns her own salon. The girls are now sporting shorter bangs and nicely layered, shoulder-length dos.





It all worked out, except for poor Daisy Doodle. I should mention that the girls also cut random pieces of fur off the dog's back. And there's no amount of grooming that can fix that.



Dinner last night: mac and cheese with hot dogs

Exactly three years ago:

Just Another Day in the Life