Frances Friday: Hair

People are always commenting on Frances's hair: it is very long, very thick for her age, and a lovely ash-blond that's nearly white around her face. I've been cutting it since she was four months old. Not only was she born with hair, she was born with a lot of it--I joke that if she'd gone to term she would have come out with pigtails--and even before she was born, her hair was clearly visible on the ultrasound, much to my shock. At seven months, I had ultrasound techs telling me that Frances was going to have a lot of hair.

"You must have pretty bad heartburn," they'd add.

"Not a bit," I'd reply.

So Frances has never been bald. There was a time right around four-six months when she had a nice little tonsure from lying on her back all the time and rubbing the hair off, but she has never been bald.

Her daycare room at school has been asking parents to bring in baby photos of their children. The one I picked of Frances is around eight months, Frances dressed all in purple including baseball cap and little gelly sandals, on her back in the crib she wouldn't sleep in, kicking her feet and smiling with those enormous blue eyes (my other leftover baby photos showed an itsy bitsy jaundiced newborn Frances covered with wires and tubes in the hospital--not so much fun for sharing with your new school friends). Wisps of fine blond hair poke out from underneath her hat--a lot of hair for a baby but not very much for Frances.

"When I was a baby I didn't have hair." She laughs.

"Well, you had some hair, just not very much..."

She cuts me off: "And then I got bigger and bigger and growed up and my hair got long!" She waves her arms around her head as if to indicate a fountain of hair descending from her scalp.

I'm not sure what this means for the boys she knows, since most of them do not have long hair, but she has definitely latched on to long hair for women as a signed of grown-up-edness. As I was informed recently, I can't be a baby because I'm her Mommy and I'm all grown up and my hair is very long! These moments of watching her trying to piece what she knows of the world together into a sensible whole are a treat.

I should also mention, in case anyone has forgotten, that the earnestness on her tiny star-like face as she explains the true workings of the world to her clueless Mommy is a continual delight, well worth the effort in choking out a relatively calm "I see" until she turns away and I can shake in silent laughter.

Posted by Andrea at October 12, 2007 7:21 AM under Frances Friday

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