Sean and I had decided to book our Hawaii trip the week before spring break. A bit of research revealed that we could pay for a babysitter the week of spring break when the kids were out of school and still come out way ahead, so that’s what we did. We secured our sitter just before Christmas time. She verified the week before spring break that we still needed her. And then literally three minutes before she was to arrive at our house on Monday after the overseas trip during which Sean and I failed to sleep, she canceled due to illness.

Our little Texans

I spent the better part of that day trying various contacts and agencies off and on to get another babysitter set up. It wasn’t till Tuesday afternoon that we managed to get someone, which means Sean and I split duties on Monday and the first half of Tuesday. He watched them during the morning and I watched them in the afternoon. It just so happened that I had to take a call Monday afternoon from someone who was onsite doing work that I had specifically requested of them. About ten minutes into the call, I see Ian at the doorway beaming with pride, telling me Maya had cut his hair.

I hastily finished up my call and went out to assess the damage. Nobody was bleeding, so I figured that was a win. Maya had administered her own haircut as well and hid the evidence deep in the recycling bin in our kitchen. Little girl went to town on their hair. They each had a section right on the tippy top of their heads that was cut very nearly down to the scalp. Maya’s hair is so full and wavy that you really didn’t see hers much unless you were looking for it. Ian didn’t get off so lightly. His would need to be dealt with, but in the meantime, we took to calling him Friar Ian.

Lovely Maya

On Thursday, I took him to our regular haircut lady to see what options we had. Not many, as it turns out. Poor Ian received a buzz cut. He was nearly in tears by the time we were done, telling her, “Put my hair back on!” She had removed it; surely she could install it again. He kept asking me to find him some hair, so when we came home, I let him try out Maya’s Te Fiti wig, but it was too big and cumbersome for him to play well.

He insisted on turning his hat that way. We couldn’t convince him otherwise.

He eventually got used to it, and in a few days, it was almost like it had never happened. The only problem was that it was time for our annual bluebonnet photos. The hillsides were coated and the weather was nice, so we had to take our opportunity. We had gotten Ian a hat to wear over his shaven head, but ultimately there are more photos of him without it than with it.

We had gotten the kids some aloha-wear in Hawaii and talked them into donning these clothes for the photos this year. As usual, Sean had to work hard to capture images of our kids when they were sitting relatively still and weren’t making goofy faces. In the end though, they turned out just fine.