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.