Little Lion Man

  For most of the first year of Liam's life, his head looked like this:

Big, round, and most of all, bald.

  By his first birthday, hair production had finally kicked in and he had the sweetest teensy, tiny curls on the back of his head.

 Little did we know what those early curls were to become ...

16 months

20 months

  Just before his second birthday, the hair really started to take on a life of its own.

23 months

2nd birthday

  It was probably somewhere around this time that the people started regularly asking when we were going to cut his hair. We had no plan. We loved it. Josh had a long-haired phase in college, and I've always loved long hair on boys. And Liam's hair ... well, it was just so blonde and curly and bouncy and perfect. Why mess with perfection? Anyway, when you don't cut hair, it generally keeps on growing.

  And that is the true story of Liam's transformation from Charlie Brown to Goldilocks.

  So, two days after Christmas, Josh and I finally decided the time had come for the dreaded first haircut. We took him to the local Pigtails & Crewcuts salon, which specializes in little kid haircuts; and both of his grandmas came with us. Hair like that needs paparazzi, you know.

  He chose to sit in the airplane and sucked on a blue raspberry Dumdum while watching Madagascar. The unsympathetic stylist correctly guessed that he is a first child and first grandchild, and Cora respected the moment by sitting quietly in her carseat, never making a peep, as the locks were lopped.

  "Do you want the little boy haircut, where I use clippers around his ears and the back of his neck?" she asked. Goodness, no. Not ready for that yet. "Let's leave it shaggy," I said. "We still want it to stick out from underneath beanies this winter." She asked if we'll wait another 2.5 years to cut it again ... We'll see.

  He looks as precious as ever, and I think we've adjusted. It's shorter, but still curly and wild ... just the way we like it. He is and always will be, as his Daddy says, our little lion man.