Tales of the Bald and the Beautiful

Today I want to talk to you about hair.

Hair … or rather, lack of.  And no, this post is not an ode-to-my-husband-and-his-rapidly-diminishing-follicles. Its about my daughter.

My bald, that’s-a-boy-right? nearly 18-month old daughter.

When Avery was born, she had the same smattering of fluff that most newborns have … a little cul-de-sac that went from the sides to the back, with a few faint strands on top.

All newborns sleep on wood plates, don't they?

It was even dark, for pete’s sake.

“Yay!” I thought innocently. “I shall have my tiny brunette mini-me, and things shall be lovely, and we shall run across rainbows together!”.

And then.

And then her head continued to grow, and her hair … did not. 

Headbands, pink, and frills = necessity

I've got the hair of a 97 year old man, huzzah!

By the time she was 6 months old, I had long grown weary of the embarrassed stammer of strangers as they tried to decipher just what, exactly, I had birthed. “My, that’s a healthy little … er … fellow?” they’d say, as my dressed-head-to-toe-in-pink-and-wearing-a-shirt-that-read-“I’m a girl, asshole”-baby laughed heartily and then tried to bite their arm.  

At one point I even had an individual ask me if I “was sure” Ave was a female. 

“I’m sorry?” I asked, not certain I’d understood the question.

"I mean, it has no hair. Don’t girls usually have hair by now?” the man replied.

Yeah. Woe be to the mother of a bald-headed baby girl.

On occasion older women would come up to me and, after asking specifically about Avery’s gender, would launch into tales of their own bald daughters, most of whom were hairless until they were four. “But don’t worry,” they’d say. “Now she has the most gorgeous head of hair, and all my stressing was for naught.”

And the thing is, inherently I know Avery isn’t going to be bald for the rest of her life. On my List of Things Andra is Currently Freakin’ About, my daughter’s hair length doesn’t even crack the Top 20 (spot #19 is currently filled by “Will The Biebs make it past this emotional hurdle of breaking up with Selena Gomez, or is he doomed to continue his downward spiral forever more?”, in case you wanted to know).

But.

Here’s my deep, dark, very anti-feminist-movement secret:

I just want to be able to do fun, stylish things with my daughter’s hair fortheloveofgodshes1.5yearsoldalreadygoddamnit.

There. *deep exhalation of breath* I feel better now.

And to be fair, I think I only have 6 months to a year left to wait, judging by Ave’s current hair growth. It's finally coming in, though it’s chosen a very odd back-to-front follicle dispersal method, leaving her with a highly discernable line of hair vs. baldness at the top of her head. Sort of a DMZ Line, if you will.

At this point I’m thankful she appears to be a blonde, ‘cause if she was brunette … she’d be looking like an aged hippy. And for that, I guess we can all be thankful.