Another Childhood Milestone

Last night Mr. Crackers & C went to his monthly pack meeting for Cub Scouts. Since Mr. Crackers was a boy scout himself (many, many) years ago, he has taken on the parental responsibilities of this activity. I had to attend one of these so-called meetings myself a few months ago & I'll just tell you that if I had to go with C to any more of those chaotic pack events, his career as a Cub Scout would have ended months ago - but that, my friends, is a story for another time.

Anyway, last night was a shower night here at the House of Crackers. Both of my hooligans love to play in the water, so shower night is a happy night. Since C was gone at his pack meeting K got to take an extra long shower in my bathroom. Normally K's showers involve a lot of splashing, loud singing & a copious amount of soap (We seem to go through gallons of kid shampoo around here each month, but since the end result is clean children I'm not about to complain about it).

Since shower taking is such a loud endeavor for her, I feel free to wander about the house doing important activities like playing Bejeweled Blitz and Word Challenge on Facebook like putting away laundry or catching up on emails. Last night however I noticed that after about 5 minutes things had gotten really quiet...too quiet. My Mommy radar was pinging away as I yelled to her to make sure she was OK. After getting nothing but silence in return I started rushing to the bathroom calling for her again. Just before I got there she called out, "I'm OK Momma, but I'm not done yet. Just 5 more minutes OK?" Five more minutes of Bejeweled Blitz and Word Challenge downtime sounded like a good idea to me, so I returned to the office.



About 8 minutes later (I was really on a roll on Word Challenge) I went in to get my now somewhat pruney younger child out of the shower. When I slid open the shower door I noticed she was staring down at her hands. She said, "Where did all this hair come from Momma?" I looked down and noticed she was holding a dark clump of hair in her hands. My first thought was that she must have pulled the hair out of the drain ...Ack! But, then I realized that we don't ever really have hair clumps sitting on the shower drain (and I can't be more thrilled about that fact than I currently am). I further realized that the hair she was holding was dark like Mr. Crackers hair, but that it was also really long -- like 3 or 4 inches long.



I looked at her face & noticed there were two more clumps of dark hair there, kind of framing her nose. Holy Smokes! I then looked down at the floor of the shower & saw several more chunks of long hair. What the what?!



I started panicking a bit. Did our shampoo suddenly & inexplicably turn radioactive? Had K been accidentally exposed to radiation at International Day at school earlier that morning (perhaps someone may have been excited to show off the fruits of their former country's nuclear program...) ? I asked her what happened to her hair & in typical pre-schooler fashion she looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know." I really had no idea what to think except that I needed to get this child out of the shower immediately.


As I reached into the shower to pull her out I noticed something...my razor which is normally stored in the shower caddy out of the children's' reach was now on the lower shelf in the shower stall. I also happened to see that there were several clumps of dark hair now hanging from the blade of the razor. Apparently, K's recent growth spurt has enabled her to reach a whole new world of dangerous objects that were once too high to be of notice.



After doing a quick search to make sure she hadn't cut herself anywhere (thankfully she didn't have as much as the smallest nick on her skin), I asked her, "Did you use Mommy's razor on your hair?"



She looked at me with those innocent eyes and said, "No Momma. I just used your curler."



As I dried her off, large clumps of hair continued to fall out of her head. I calmly (& without laughing, thank you very much) told her that what she used was not a curler, but was in fact a very sharp razor. I tried explain how dangerous razors were & how lucky she was that she didn't get hurt. I think she finally grasped the gravity of the situation when I said, "You may have really done a number on your hairdo kiddo. I'm not sure yet what you are going to look like once we get this mess dried out a bit."

With both of us expecting the worst, we moved over to the vanity so I could use the hairdryer and assess the damage. Honestly, I can say that you really can't tell that anything happened. Sure, she has more bangs today than she had when she woke up yesterday, but other than that she came out of the experience with her hair relatively intact. It probably helped that she's got incredibly thick hair. I think mostly she just managed to thin it a bit.

And with that, another childhood milestone is behind us.