OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Hair Horror

Ok, I learned a lesson the hard way. Supposedly, the smaller the braids or corn-rows, the longer they can remain in. So, I did Julia's hair is almost 80 little braids and left them in for a month. It was horrible to get out! Horrible! I'm embarrassed to admit that my cousin, who only has a Liberian son, came up with the idea of soaking the braids in oil to help get them out and that helped tremendously. (Why didn't I think of that?) I believe that we took over six hours to get that poor baby's braids out! I worked so long yesterday that my elbows ached so badly last night that I couldn't sleep.


Here's Alei doing a late shift; we were trying to accomplish a chunk of it while Julia slept last night.


The difference between Julia and Elijah is that Elijah had a long nap while Julia had no nap at all.

Alei doesn't wear her glasses too often, so Elijah was quite interested in checking them out.

He tried them on a few times; Julia slept through it all.

I did a lengthy shift this morning, in spite of my elbows, but we really saw the end when Alei and my sister pulled a double-duty hair shift this afternoon. I didn't want to work anywhere near the carpet the way we were dousing her with olive oil, so Moriah loaned Julia her portable DVD player. (I am hoping that it works again tomorrow after all the spilled tea evaporates out of it.)

When Julia got tired this afternoon, I got her blanket and pillow for her and the work continued.

Tomorrow Julia is going to church with wild and free hair, then we are going to attempt a fairly simple style that will last about a week. It will be quite a while before I do micro-braids again! In fact, I am planning on looking into locing her hair into permanent tiny braids. I know everyone has an opinion on the good and bad of locs, but continuing to spent this kind of time on Julia's hair is pretty difficult for me as a homeschooling mother of nine!


I wish I had taken a picture of Julia when we were done. I promised her that I would take her out for fried chicken when we finished - she about deserved Disney World with how well she did for so many hours. Anyway, she had her hair sticking up everywhere, a frilly, summer white dress, jacket and emerged with her red high-tops. It was beyond comical. I let her wear the dress, but convinced her to add church shoes instead of the high-tops, and Alei, Aunt Deb and I headed out with Julia for chicken! We had a good time.

3 comments:

  1. Bless your heart! What an ordeal. I love the way big free hair looks! Get a giant Ziploc bag and fill it with plain uncooked rice. Put the whole DVD player in it and leave it for at least 24 hours before you try to turn it on. My kiddos spilled a happy meal sized coke on ours and the rice trick that someone shared with me worked like a dream! Somehow the rice sucks all the moisture out of the electronics. If you can take the back off the DVD player before you put it in the rice, it may speed up the process, but I know that is not always possible. Good luck!

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  2. I am no pro, but when I do the little braids, I actually do twists....they are much easier to get out!

    I now have an amazing new respect for all the beautiful braids I see out there!!!

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  3. Oh the joy of hair:)
    After Diezel's cornrows come out in a week or two
    (I normally go 3 weeks in between) we decided to buzz his hair. I know I'm going to miss it, but...
    I think only having to do Xia's hair will cut back on the time.
    BTW-Julia looks like such a trooper.

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