Our boy’s hair seems to grow pretty quickly. Especially the bit above the middle of his forehead, which doesn’t take long to turn into a unicorn horn. So on Sunday, we skipped swimming lessons (he’d been fighting a cold, and had a slight cough, and as you may know we are very protective (overly so?) when he’s got even a hint of a cold) and headed to Walthamstow, a nearby neighborhood that’s home to an ugly brick 1980s-style shopping mall with a Supercuts inside. (The same place, as it happens, where he got his first official professional haircut back in November, and where he also took his first official (if tentative) steps).
This time around, he was very dubious and withdrawn, almost shy, even though his stylist was a young blonde bird. Usually, of course, he’d be flirting up a storm. But this time he pretty much just sat there, looking concerned and grumpy. He squirmed just a little bit, but not bad, and mostly passed the time (all five minutes of it) by looking in the mirror at the woman sitting in the waiting area and feeding spoonfuls or something to her baby in a stroller.
By the end, Nyan was fine, and even gave his stylist a friendly bye-bye wave as we left. Here, a slideshow of pictures that Daddy took during the haircut – and after, a story about what happened after we left Supercuts:
So we wandered around this mall for a bit, mostly to find an ATM to get some cash. We headed for a bookstore – Nyan loves books! – but just outside was one of those stalls they set up in the main walkway of shopping malls. This one sold toy cars, toy trucks, toy keyboards – all of it at toddler-eye-level, and cleverly and cynically designed to ensure that a toddler – say, a toddler who just had a haircut – would see the toys and not be moved until he played with all of them. So that’s what we did. Cars, trucks, helicopters, you name it. Finally Daddy was able to drag Nyan away (to be more precise, Daddy was able to carry a squirming, unhappy Nyan away) and into the bookstore.
We lasted about a minute in the bookstore before he toddled off, out of the store and back to the toy stall! Their ploy almost worked; Daddy was this close to buying a cheap electronic keyboard, but good sense won out. We managed to get him back in the bookstore long enough to buy a couple new books, and then Daddy carried and expertly distracted him as we walked out and passed the toy stall (‘Ooh, buddy, look in that store! Look at that – it’s a shoe store! Look at all those shoes! Oh, wow, and check this out: a woman’s clothing store! Isn’t that a lovely dress?”) Hey, you do what you have to do.
Nyan Thomas L's Blog 