Hairy Adventures

So a few weeks ago I decided to finally cut my hair. After months of weak-mindedly wanting to do it and then changing my mind again, I finally made the leap and got my hair lopped off. Twelve inches of it. For some unknown reason, I had always considered my long hair an integral part of my identity. And I guess that's why I had always hemmed and hawed when it came to actually making a decision to cut off my hair.

Anyways, the final seed was planted when the girls wanted to cut off their long hair. I wasn't particularly attached to their hair, although it was pretty fun to show off their beautiful straight shiny hair. However, combing it and styling it were not so much fun, and the girls hated waking up with it tangled up every morning. So when their friend cut off her hair and and donated it to Locks of Love, we thought hey, that would be a cool idea, and decided that would be something we'd like to do too.

Elizabeth was the first one to do it in March. She loved it, and would probably do it again in a heartbeat. And I think she felt really good about donating her hair. She's growing it longer again now. For another donation? Who knows.

Abigail begged and begged to do it next. She wanted to do it the same day as Elizabeth, but due to a misunderstanding (the stylist thought it was a 12-inch minimum donation, not 10 inches), we ended up having to wait until her hair grew another two inches, in May. She also loves having her hair short. One difference is that Elizabeth wanted to grow out her bangs, but Abigail wanted to keep hers. Her hair is growing again, too, but two months behind Elizabeth.

Then it was my turn. I kept hesitating. I kept making the excuse that my hair is too curly, and it'll just puff out when it's short. I'll look like an old Korean lady with badly permed hair. The matronly look. You know, that look. I badly wanted to avoid the hairstyle I ended up with in sixth grade -- when my mom and aunt thought it'd be a great idea to cut my hair short and give me a perm. Yuck.

I had straight hair with a mind of its own when I was little. It was a decent length (not too short, not too long) when I was about 5 or 6. And then my mom and aunt (same aunt!) thought it'd be a great idea to cut my hair short. I really wanted to keep it longer, but they somehow convinced me that they're just gonna cut it a little bit. Well, every time her scissors went to my hair, they had decided that "it was uneven, and they had to cut the other side." You know, to "even it out."

I think I avoided putting scissors to my hair after that for a long time. By the time I was in fifth grade, my hair was pretty long again. But it was thicker, and getting coarse. I started to hate my hair because it was too hard to comb, but didn't know what to do with it. So again, I submitted myself to my aunt's scissors, and in sixth grade, I ended up with a bob and a perm.

You know how I feel about that.

So for the longest time after that, I largely avoided putting scissors to my hair again.

And I also avoided hair rollers like the plague.

After I got married, on a trip to Korea, I discovered "magic perm." I loved this perm. Basically they put perm solution in your hair and then iron it flat. Some people say they look dorky afterwards because their hair is so flat against the head. But I loved it. My hair looked so sleek, so smooth, so shiny, so not-coarse.

From haircut

I think I went back to get it done once or twice, but then decided I didn't want to shell out the $$$ for it, so I decided to grow it out. That's when the nightmare began. My hair, remember, was naturally coarse and wrinkly. And the permed section was flat. I have no words to describe this phase of my hair where the roots had a mind of their own and the ends hung limp and lifeless.

And then I got pregnant. Too tired to style my hair, too scared of chemicals to do anything to my hair, and not girly enough to really care.

Needless to say, at that point, I finally decided I'm not going to fight my hair. I'm not going to make it do something it doesn't want to do, because first of all, I'm too lazy to spend half an hour blow-drying it into submission every morning, because at the end of the week, that's three and a half hours of my life I'm never going to get back. Second of all, I'm too cheap to shell out $$$ for my hair when it's just going to grow out anyway.

So that's when I decided when I get my hair cut I'm going to be honest with myself and the stylist that I'm not going to really style my hair in the morning, and I probably won't get my hair cut more often than once a year, so please please please don't give me a high maintenance haircut. So the stylist cut off the flat parts, and did some razor-cut thing that I never really understood, and I vowed this would be my last bad haircut.



A few years after my girls were born, I realized that my hair looks great when it's wet, but looks horrible when it dries, so I began my quest to find something that'll help there. I found some hair gunk that works well, and discovered that although combing my hair when wet is fine, I should never ever ever comb or brush my hair when it is dry. And I also concluded that long hair means heavy, weighed down hair, that won't puff out into the matronly permed look.

I went and got one last haircut just to clean off the razored edges and thin it out a little, and stayed away from any scissors for about a year and a half.

So until a few weeks ago, that was my routine: after my shower, I'd rub in two squirts of my hair gunk, comb it through, and let it air dry. Simple as that. It'd look fine until I wash it again. As long as I didn't comb or brush it. I think a few times I did blow-dry it straight, just to mix it up. But for the most part, my hair rarely got blow-dried. I loved the length because I could twist it up into a bun and then hold it there with a pencil. How easy was that!



My hair grew until it went down to my waist, and then I realized it was always getting caught in my purse straps, Abigail was always playing with it and pulling ONE strand just enough to make it hurt, and it was starting to look really scraggly. The thinning that had been done a year and a half earlier was now just horrible, and my hair was starting to feel chlorine-damaged, although I was pretty careful to wash my hair as soon as I got out of any pool. I got some deep conditioner but that didn’t help much, so it was time to go and get it cut again.

Well, since the girls had been brave and got their hair cut off and donated it, I couldn’t just chicken out and trim off the ends. I had to get it all cut off. So that’s just what I did. Twelve inches sent it from my waist to my shoulders.



It feels so much thicker and healthier now. And since I’ve got my hair gunk, it doesn’t look all puffy and old-lady-permed. At least that’s what I think.

Flat Stanley in Southen California

The plan:
leave Friday to go to M&M's house in southern California, hang out for a couple of days.
On Sunday, go to Anaheim with M&M&family to meet S&G&family, and check into a hotel near Disneyland.
Visit The Mouse on Monday.
Tuesday return home.

Kids were hard at work playing.

Flat Stanley was hanging out in the lobby at our hotel near Disneyland.

Flat Stanley rode the bus with us to Disneyland.

Family photo with Mickey.

Shooting the targets on the Buzz Lightyear ride.

Looking for the targets on the Buzz Lightyear ride.

Three kids in 3-D.

Can't forget Abigail's monster smile.

Silly smiles from the six oldest kids.

Flat Stanley's photo op with Mickey.

We got back to our hotel to find the girls' dolls had a great time playing on our beds.  Flat Stanley wanted to join in on the fun.

Introducing Bob

Both girls had their hair chopped off over the past couple of months.  They have a friend who had beautiful, thick, long, black hair, and she cut it off and donated it to Locks of Love.  I thought that was a wonderful idea and mentioned it to Elizabeth and Abigail.  It took a while for them to warm up to the idea, but by the time their hair got long enough, they were more than ready.  Elizabeth kept asking when she will get to cut her hair short "just like Z."  Abigail wanted her hair cut too, but since her last haircut was more recent, we had to wait a couple more months for it to get long enough for the minimum donation length (10 inches).  Those last two months of waiting were an exercise in patience.  By the end of the wait, Abigail was asking me every day "can I get my hair cut today?"

They are so happy with their short bobs.  I also love how it's so much easier to comb, although a part of me is secretly trying to figure out how long it'll take to grow it out again, in order to donate again.  I mean, why not?  It grows for free on their heads, and if it helps somebody out, why not!


Now I want to cut off my hair and donate it too, but I'm so afraid of what short hair will do to me.  It's curly, and who knows what'll happen when the weight of the length goes away -- will my hair go flying out in all different directions?  If only I knew for sure that it'll be okay.

A belated happy new year and merry Christmas and happy Thanksgiving while we're at it, too

I've been a horrible blogger.  I have been trying to keep up about 4 blog posts per month, and completely missed December.  I can explain myself!  I was taking two classes and had two big projects plus two finals, all converging in December.  And right before that was Thanksgiving, which I had taken upon myself to cook up pretty much the entire meal, mostly from scratch, for my family, my parents, and my sister's family.  And as soon as finals was over, we had to scramble to get the house decorated for Christmas and cleaned and ready for my in-laws' annual visit.  And today is my dad's birthday too, so we spent the weekend at my parents' place and helped throw him a little birthday dinner party.  So yeah, I've been a little busy.  Sorry.  I hope you will forgive me.

If it helps, here are a few pictures as a peace offering...

Me and Abi hanging out at our favorite frozen yogurt place.  (The rest of the family is on the other side of the table.)

Eliz's first school assembly performance

Cornerstone Fellowship's annual Women's Christmas Dinner with Point of Grace performing

SNOW!! I had to take a picture because this is a rare occasion -- I heard the last time it snowed here was in 1977 or something like that.

The girls took pictures with Santa. He comes to a mom-and-pop shop here in town during December, and the same Santa has been coming for years. No charge for pictures; bring your own camera!

Eliz's first school award; an AR bronze medal for accumulating 25 points. She was one of three in her classroom to receive this.

Christmas morning at our house with the in-laws

Christmas day trip to Mt. Diablo

Hula hooping -- Eliz is showing off how she can even jump while keeping the hula hoop spinning.  Lil stinker makes it look easy.

Cruisin' -- Part 5 -- Wednesday (revised)

Wednesday morning we found ourselves floating on Mexican waters at Ensenada.  We looked out our window and the first thing we saw was the harbor and a HUGE MEXICAN FLAG in the middle of it.  Yup, we were definitely in Mexico.

We went to see pretty much what Ensenada is famous for:  La Bufadora, a marine geyser.  Basically as the waves pound into the coastline, pressure builds up in a particular cave, shaped in a particular way, and shoot up into the sky, 80 to 100 feet up.  On the walk there, we had to walk through a flea market, where the vendors sold all manner of trinkets and souvenirs, as well as tacos and seconds-old churros.

The girls were well-entertained on the rest of the cruise thanks to some magnetic bead necklaces that my mom had bought for them.  They'd wrap them around their wrists, loop them around their necks (loose per Mommy's orders!), and stick them to the walls in our stateroom on the ship.  Yes, those wallpapered walls were magnetic!

Unfortunately, there was one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad incident that occurred in Ensenada.  We finished the tour of La Bufadora and were waiting around for my parents to come back from shopping so that we could take the bus back to our ship.  While we were waiting, we saw a huge jump house for kids to play in.  We asked if we can let our girls jump around in there, and they said that's what it's there for, so we let them play.  Abigail was tired by this point, so she napped in my arms while Elizabeth jumped in there alone.  A few minutes later she was joined by about five other kids, who were all happily jumping around.  Four of the kids got out after a few minutes, and sat down to eat in an enclosed patio next to a bar, leaving Elizabeth and another boy, who looked to be about 8 years old.  Next thing I know, he grabbed her, tackled her, and BIT HER LEG.  I couldn't do anything because I had a napping Abigail, but my husband jumped up and almost ripped the kid's head off (don't worry, neither one of us laid a finger on him).  He got Elizabeth out from the clutches of this monster-boy (sorry, anybody who attacks my daughter and leaves toothmarks and scraped skin on her leg will get called monster-boy), and I ran around looking for his parents.  They were nowhere to be seen.  I went to him and asked where his mommy is, and that's when I saw that he had Down Syndrome.  And that's when he spit at me.  I asked again where his mommy is, this time in Spanish, and he spit at me again.

His mommy was still nowhere to be seen.

My daughter's leg had a huge bite mark on it.  I could count the number of teeth that he had just from a look at her leg.  And I could see two spots of scraped skin right where his incisors were.

I went up to the enclosed patio and finally saw a woman walking toward the stairs, and found out that it was her son in the jump house that had bit my daughter.  But at this point, what could I do?  I can't beat her up.  I can't get mad at her son.  I can't rip her son's head off.  All I could say was "where the heck were you?  You NEED TO SUPERVISE YOUR CHILD!!  I don't care that you need to grab a glass of water, YOU NEED TO SUPERVISE YOUR CHILD!!  If you have to leave the area, BRING HIM WITH YOU!!"  But what's done is done, and really, what could she do other than apologize up one side and down the other?  She did apologize, but it was quite obvious that she couldn't (or wouldn't) get control of her son.  She tried to get him out of the jump house but he wouldn't comply.  She tried for a minute or two, and then gave up.

Ugh.

Anyways, my husband washed off her leg, and I got some ice for her leg, and we tried to make the rest of our time there better.  And stay the heck away from that boy.

Well, about 10 minutes later, I saw a man trying to talk the boy out of the jump house.  What?  Is he the father??  Now I'm angry again -- two parents, and neither one was supervising their son??  I also saw that the boy had a similar wristband that my girls had gotten on the cruise.  Great, this boy is on our boat.  And who knows who'll supervise him (or not), and when he'll bite again.

Ugh.

Cruisin' -- Part 4 -- Tuesday evening

Tuesday evening was the formal dinner.  It had been ages since I'd worn anything fancier than "church clothes" and that's not saying much, considering a good population of our church wears all manner of jeans, shorts, and t-shirts to church on any given Sunday morning.  The girls, on the other hand, love dressing up, and do it every chance they get.  And my husband?  He can wear just a toga and he'll be dashing.  Unfortunately, the entire evening he was the one behind the camera, so you'll never know how handsome he looked.

After dinner (a few of the appetizers were stuffed mushrooms, pumpkin cream soup, and chilled strawberry soup, which tasted like cold melted strawberry ice cream-- yum!  And one of the entree choices was lobster tail and shrimp.  Mmmmm, seafood...)

 
we all went to watch the show at the Normandie Lounge.  A good time was had by all, but of course, it would've been more relaxing if the girls hadn't taken turns needing to go potty repeatedly.

And no worries, I'm fully dressed.  ;-)

Afterwards, we saw a stand-up comedian,  whose name I can't remember for the life of me.  He was hilarious.  My mom had graciously offered to babysit the girls so we could go and have a date night.  We had a great time, but I couldn't help but feel just a *teensy* bit bad that I was having a date night while my mom was babysitting, on a cruise that we had taken her on, to celebrate HER sixtieth birthday.

Happy birthday, Mom.  You're the best.

Cruisin' -- Part 3 -- Tuesday

Tuesday morning we woke up on the Carnival Paradise.  Our room was clean and my bed was very comfortable -- I dare say it might be even better than ours at home.  It's a small room, about 10 feet by 10 feet, and they got four beds into there -- two pushed together side-by-side like a king-size bed, and two suspended on the walls, one above the head of the king-size bed and one on the other side of the room.  The thought of having the room permanently arranged like this was a bit overwhelming, but this is where the cruise housekeeping earns their gratuity -- every morning they'd straighten out the sheets and fold up the wall beds, in addition to replenishing towels and other hotel-y stuff, and every evening they'd turn down the beds, open up the wall beds and set up the ladders to climb up into them, and leave behind a short stack of mint chocolates next to an origami towel animal.

Breakfast was buffet, with an omelet bar -- my favorite kind.  I was surprised to see how people had left their good manners behind on this trip though.  A few people ahead of me in line was a (large) man, getting food.  Right behind him were probably about five or six people waiting for their scrambled eggs and pancakes.  One of them got up a little too close while reaching for a ladle, and he suddenly yelled at her to apologize for having bumped into him.

Great, I'm on a boat with this guy.  Ugh.  Oh well, whatever.  I'm glad I didn't bump into him (quite literally) during the rest of the cruise.

Anyways, Tuesday we went to Catalina Island, apparently taking the longest possible route from Long Beach.  I estimated that if we traveled all night long, in a straight line without stopping, we would've had to go the breakneck speed of two miles an hour.

On Catalina we took a bus tour to the middle of the island.  We got to see some bison

and some crazy good views from high up on an island.

That's our ship!

We also got to hear some of the bus driver's punny jokes.  I'm a sucker for puns, and he had quite a few of them.

What did the mommy bison say to her son as he walked away?  "Bye, son."

What did the eucalyptus trees say when the tour bus scraped against the bark?  "You clipped us."

Cruisin' -- Part 1

November 6 was my mom's sixtieth birthday.  In Korea it's a really big deal to turn sixty.  The three traditional "milestone" birthdays are 100 days (baek-il), first birthday (chut-dol), and sixtieth birthday (hwan-gap).  No Sweet Sixteen, no rite of passage into adulthood, no over-the-hill.  Just a big fifty-nine-year gap between big birthday bashes.

It's normal for the children of the birthday-girl (or birthday-boy) to give a gift that puts to shame everybody else's gifts to their parents' sixtieth birthdays, and it's not unheard of to throw big dinner receptions, buy a luxury car, or send the parents on a trip, on the children's tab.  So when it became my mom's hwan-gap, my husband and I decided that we'd take my parents on a cruise.

So we went on a four-night cruise to Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico.  We took the kids and my parents, and we had a great time for the most part.  The food was great, the entertainment was entertaining, and there was free(!) childcare until 10pm.

The wiggly, woggly, wibbly, wobbly tooth

Elizabeth's tooth finally came out today. It took a full month of wiggling, and this morning we noticed that the new tooth is already beginning to poke out through the gums behind the loose tooth before it even came out.

This morning she showed us her loose tooth and it looked like it would come out with a good tug. Her tooth was so loose that you could actually see the jagged bottom edge of the tooth -- the part that's supposed to be embedded in the socket.

Before naptime I thought I'd give it a tug and see if it'd come out. It would wiggle, it would woggle, wibble, and wobble, but wouldn't come out. Thinking I just had to get a good grip on it, I told her to take a nap, and I'd get a gauze pad to pull the tooth later. After naptime I tried again, and she actually started to cry and said that it was hurting. I read somewhere that if you pull a loose tooth before it's ready, you could actually leave behind bits of the tooth's root and cause an infection. So of course I let it go and decided to let it stay to be pulled another day.

We went out for dinner at an ice cream parlor with some friends later, and after dinner and dessert (ice cream sundaes of course!), she said her tooth is even looser. She began to play with it, and discovered that she can spin it around in its socket. Next thing I knew, she pulled it out. By herself. No blood, no pain, nothing. Just a tooth, and a 5-year-old girl with a new hole in her smile. It was too easy.

First day of kindergarten

Today is Elizabeth's first day of kindergarten. We woke up at 6:30 and found a sign on our front lawn that says "Welcome to kindergarten" along with her name, her school name and mascot. A little freaky because we weren't expecting it, and who knows when the mysterious School People came onto our lawn and put up the sign. Middle of the night? And they know where we live! Freaky. But still, it's pretty exciting that these mysterious School People make an effort to make their youngest students feel welcome at the school.

Anyways, I don't know who's more excited about her first day of school, me or Elizabeth. She seems to be very whatever about it, whereas I'm the one with the camera, taking pictures of everything left and right pertaining to kindergarten. But I don't feel teary-eyed, and I don't feel sad that my baby's growing up. I'm happy for her that she's growing up and participating in this next step. I'm not sure if I'm taking pictures because I want to remember this Momentous Occasion or because other parents are taking pictures too and I gotta keep up with the Joneses. Maybe it'll hit me more later. Who knows.

Pictures from July, finally.

Swimming lessons
Ballet class
So.Cal road trip: the beach, my souvenir, and Legoland