Peer pressure

As the heat soars to record highs here in North Carolina, it occurred to me that Luke and Will's hair was getting long and in need of its typical summer shear. We NC Slaviks don't do anything subtle. When it comes to Luke and Will's haircuts, the old college clippers come out and Nate gives them "you're in the army now" level 4 clipper cuts... except when he accidentally starts Will's cut with a level 2 and has to improvise with a fade on the side. That's talent. And years of giving Sigma Nus haircuts in Crosby.

Luke doesn't mind the clipper. Will cries. But he cries if we do scissor cuts. He cries if we take him to a barber. So we save some money, time and face by clipper cutting him at home. We've moved past the point of being shocked at the shunt scars that become more obvious when their hair is clipper short.

Here are some post-chop photos (after the tears dried):

Once Will and Luke had their haircut, I looked sadly over at Matt and realized that his hair had gone beyond the cute baby mullet hair that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, and had entered "mom, you need to suck it up and cut my hair" length.

The idea of clipper cutting Matt's hair scared me, so we piled into the van and took him to our local Great Clips. The lady was just so excited to be the first one to ever cut Matt's hair, and she did exceptionally well with him. He never cried, but he never cracked a smile either (until we were done). He was just very pensive and unsure of what was happening to him.

In the end, Matt survived his first hair cut. He looks a lot less neglected and "my mom wishes I was a girl" now. Only I am sad to see his baby hair go! I know that after the first haircut, his hair will start to lose its baby-fine-ness and become more coarse. But I am happy that we got to make the decision on when, where, and how much hair he lost... very different from our "first hair cut" experiences with Will and Luke (their first shunt surgeries while still in the NICU)!