Today my son cut his own hair!!!

Today my son has a new hair cut- one he did himself! I know "they" say that every child does this at some point. However, does every child do this just before the class picture is scheduled???

You see it happened last night. My husband left to drive 500 miles to look at a truck he saw on-line (everyone does this right???). In order to convince my son it was time to go to bed, I started getting ready for bed myself. I was washing my face when I notice my son at the other sink in our bathroom putting water on his face. Of course I asked him what he was doing. *** please note that I really, truly wasn't being an unobservant mother*** My son sweetly (oh, how sweetly) replied that he was washing his face just like me. He then came back into the bathroom and started pouring water on his hair. Umm....

OK, so in hind sight, I realize now that I should have asked a few more questions. I mean, why was he putting water on his hair and not just his face??? He then asked me where daddy's black combs were. Yeah, I admit it- I gave him a comb. At that point I contentedly sighed and started thinking about how James Dobson wrote that boys would want to imitate their father and this was proper psychological development. I was really happy that we are on the right track. Oops, don't I know by now that pride comes before a fall??? Let me tell you that James Dobson did NOT write about what happened next.

My son left the bathroom and I just knew he was getting into bed. Oh no! How wrong I was. He came running back and told me "I cut my hair". I didn't have my glasses on yet and couldn't quite see if he was kidding. I kept asking him over, and over, and over again "are you serious?" Yes, he was serious. He had gotten scissors out of daddy's fly fishing stuff (guess I'll have to explain that to my husband later...) and cut two large pieces out of his bangs! After laughing so hard I cried, I then told my son that he is very talented in many, many things but cutting hair isn't one of them and that only adults can cut hair. He was so proud of his actions that he had no concept of the disastrous results. I asked him two questions: did you look in the mirror when you did this? "Yes, mommy!" Why did you do this? "So I could look good." I didn't have the heart to tell him that he didn't actually accomplish his goal.

After I laughed at him, my daughter laughed at him, and I called my husband barely able to get the story out, my son realized that he might have messed up. He asked me to fix his bangs and (being the mother of the year that I am) I told him NO- daddy is the one who needs to fix it. Come on, I had to let my husband see this! We all need some comic relief right now!

This morning as we were leaving for school, my son realized that he still had two chunks of hair missing. Since we were waiting for daddy to fix it, my son was left to come up with a solution. He went upstairs to get some of "daddy's jello" (hair gel) and promptly spiked his hair. To be honest, this was a pretty good solution and it shouldn't be too obvious today what happened in our house last night.

Sometimes I think our adult lives a little like my son's. Sometimes our lives seem pretty messed up. It looks to us that there are chunks of the plan for our lives missing. We can't understand why bad things happen and we don't know how to fix them. Even though it feels like we are all alone, let me assure you that God does have the entire plan. Don't be discouraged by missing pieces, God WILL take care of you. I think that all too often we hear the message that God really isn't there but please be encouraged that He is. It may mean a change in style (for your hair or they way you are trying to fix what is wrong) but there is a way out of your problems. God won't tell you NO and that someone else needs to fix it- He WILL do that Himself.

Today I need to tell you about our squeaky Christmas.

Now that the kids are back in school, I finally have a moment to catch up on the blog. We had a pretty quiet Christmas outside of one very squeaky night. Yes, I meant to write squeaky and no things were NOT squeaky clean!

You see it all started with our traditional trip to view Christmas lights. Each year we like to go to Starbucks, get our favorite Christmas drinks (I like the peppermint white mocha myself), and drive around our subdivision looking at all of the beautiful Christmas lights. We told the kids to get ready to go and soon my son walked into the kitchen with his travel backpack. At the time it seemed perfectly normal. He said that he wanted to bring the backpack because he had packed some toys for the car. OK, I'll admit it- I thought to myself "what a great thing for him to do- taking responsibility for himself". Oh, yes, pride does come before a fall.

We situated my son in the car and my daughter came running with her backpack. Also filled with "toys". The kids were whispering and laughing with each other quite a bit. You would have thought that at this point my mom radar would have been alerted but it wasn't. I thought that there were just really excited to look at Christmas lights (do you know any kids THAT excited to drive around on a sight-seeing trip???) Hey don't be too hard on me, our kids do seem to get along pretty well so all of the chumminess wasn't too out of the ordinary (really). We drove to Starbucks and were in the process of ordering our drinks when it happened.

My husband was speaking to the kind teenager manning the drive thru speaker when suddenly I heard this strange squeak. Um, wait a minute, it wasn't a strange sounding squeak- it was a rather familiar sounding squeak. And then I heard it again! This time is was a little more like a squeal. Suddenly it dawned on me and I turned around to ask with incredulity "DO YOU HAVE THE GUINEA PIGS IN THE CAR????" I'm not quite sure what the teenager in the drive thru thought hearing that statement in the middle of our order but to be honest, I didn't really care. My petrified daughter responded "yes". That is right, all of the whispering, laughing, sharing of secrets was due to the secret each child held in their own backpacks- a guinea pig.

My thoughts ran wild: what if they get out? is there a small hole they can get through? would they drop onto the road and get run over? how are we supposed to explain another dead guinea pig? Now I know these things wouldn't really happen but I never expected that my children would take the guinea pigs for a ride to happen either. We talked about how this was not the wisest decision and the possible (OK, not likely but possible) consequences. We removed the guinea pig from my 5 year old son's lap and put them both together in my daughter's bag; we returned them home; we then went on our traditional viewing of Christmas lights- without the guinea pigs.

I think sometimes we hide things in our bags too. My kids never thought through any of the consequences of bringing the guinea pigs into a car in just backpacks. They were not trying to do something wrong, but they weren't making wise decisions either. Sometimes I do unwise things myself (like sharing my opinions when it really isn't necessary, watching something on TV that wasn't the best choice for me to spend my time thinking about, or just being short with my family not thinking about how it would affect their feelings). When I get tired, I don't want to think about making the wisest choices, but that is what God wants. It is time for me to think about the unintended consequences of my actions and make the wise choice. How about you?