Why We Shave Our Kids' Heads

First of all, for the record, Justin Bieber is actually 16. That makes me feel a little bit better. I found that out when I was rewatching his Ellen interview, which should probably make me feel a little bit worse.

Now on to the subject at hand.

Our kids always come out with "male-pattern baldness." They get this from Nate. I wish I had a baby picture of him to scan in. Thankfully, Nate has a nice, thick head of hair now. So if they continue to take after him in the hair department, they'll be lucky. But it's starts out pretty rough. With Harrison, I kept waiting for the front to grow in and catch up with the back. I waited. . .

. . .and waited. . .

. . .and waited. As his hair got longer and longer -- everywhere but the front.

Finally, after his first birthday, Nate convinced me to let him, "trim up the back." I still don't know if this was an accident or if he purposely did a horrible job so that he could just shave the whole thing, but this was his idea of "trimming up the back."

So, we took a few more pictures of our wispy-haired boy,
and then. . .

. . .0ff came the rest.

And we had our first "shorn pup." It took some getting used to and I morned his long wisps, but eventually I realized he looked much better this way. Especially when we got such positive responses from people. Looking back, we regretted waiting as long as we did to give him this new do.

Then along came Elizabeth, who took this look to a whole new level. With darker hair and much more of it, we had a situation on our hands.

I tried to distract from the "mad scientist look" with headbands.

It really didn't help her case when my mom came to visit and it looked like this the first time she saw her on that trip.

Definitely a mix between George Castanza and Kramer.

So my mom and Nate ganged up on me shaved her head. She was only 3 months old. And she was a she. With a shaved head.

Again, it took some getting used to. And it wasn't as well-received by the public as our son's shaved head had been. But honestly, scroll back up to those crazy pictures and you have to admit, it looks better.

I still tried using headbands as a distraction.

This time around, especially since he's a boy and it's totally acceptable for boys to have buzzes, we told ourselves that we would not let it get as out of hand as it did with the first two. Nate's been a little trigger happy though. He's been bugging me to shave it for over a month now. I'll admit, sometimes it did stick up funny in the back.

But sometimes it laid flat and didn't look bad, like last night, in his "before" pictures.

The bald spot in the back is how Nate finally convinced me it was time.

So, we have ourselves another shorn pup.

Again, it is taking me time to readjust. But I'm sure it will look better in the end, now that it has a chance to grow in more evenly.

I just wish I had given in sooner. We're leaving for Hawaii soon, and now he's going to be bald in all the pictures. If we had done it two weeks ago, it would have grown in a little. Nate says he'll just look like all the other Hawaiian babies.

Elizabeth pointed at his head and said, "This is Daddy's fault." Yep. For better or worse, it is definitely Daddy's fault. The problem and the solution.