When Life is Perfect... oh, Wait... It's Normal Again

My two year old was beginning to look like Cousin It.

She was also behaving a bit like Cousin It, but the hair was slightly easier to fix. So I took her along to my hairdresser for a fringe cut.

Now back when I was a kid (don’t you just love starting stories like that… I can hear my kids eyes rolling when I do it), I am pretty sure my mum literally took one of her mixing bowls, plonked it upside down on my head, got her dressmaking scissors and cut around the rim of the bowl.

Don’t believe me? Have a look at this…

Yes, I am the one on the right

Now these days, the pudding bowl haircut is classified as a form of child abuse, so I take my kids to a hair dresser. She had insisted on wearing her older sister’s size 6 dress, so she was pretty unusual looking to start with when we got there.

She stood in the door, and silently took in the heat and noise of the hair dryers, the women with their hair wrapped up in alfoil and clipped in mad little bunches, the smell of the bleach and she did what most sane people did. She screamed and tried to run away.

But she’s also a sucker for people who smile at her, and suddenly there was a room of adults all beaming at this (hairy) little girl, with the dress down to her ankles, and casually flopping over one shoulder exposing a fair bit of décolletage (can you call it that when they’re two?)

She liked the attention but she didn’t like the look of the massive scissors that quickly came her way, so it looked like we would be going home in much the same condition in which we arrived, when I hit upon the idea of the hairdresser cutting BearBear’s hair first.

BearBear is one of those weird blanket things with a bear head. Not freaky at all.

After we watched BearBear’s ‘hair’ be cut twice, she acquiesced to the idea of having her fringe cut, and 10 seconds later, we were finished and on our way out.

Except we weren’t quite done, because someone had apparently told my two year that after a trip to the hairdresser, you must stop at the café for a coffee.

So she stopped next door at the café, neatly stepped inside and pointed to the massive coffee machine. Then she looked at me and grunted.

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘You want a coffee?’

She nodded.

‘I think you’re a bit young for a coffee,’ I told her, rather pointlessly.

Ignoring me, she stepped toward the counter.

‘Hello,’ she told the barista. ‘Coffee pizz,’ then she pointed at me.

‘Do you do milkshakes?’ I asked him. He shook his head, trying not to laugh.

‘Perhaps she’d like a babycino?’ a rather helpful customer behind us suggested.

Duh.

‘Would you like a babycino?’ I asked my daughter. She nodded. ‘Ok, go find a table and sit down and I will be there in a minute.’

She walked directly to a table near the window and climbed up into the chair.

‘Hello,’ she said to the two businessmen outside the open window.

‘Uh, hello,’ one of them said, a bit shocked.

I took my seat and soon the world’s largest babycino arrived, complete with marshmallows and chocolate syrup.

‘Cankoo,’ she said and proceeded to spoon the foam and milk into the mouth.

I wish I could finish the story here, with this image of a tidy, neatly coiffed, well mannered toddler still fresh in my mind.

Unfortunately, it went downhill from this point, and involved a fair bit of crying over spilt milk, screaming and tantrums. She was pretty badly behaved too.

Still, for a few minutes there, I thought I had slipped into an alternative universe. And for those few minutes I was pretty happy. Even if it felt a bit like Stepford.