A haircut is worthy of a complete meltdown

Jake has had exactly three haircuts in his lifetime. None of them have gone well. On Tuesday, I took him to Toys R Us to get his third haircut because his hair was truly a mess. He's got these great curls in back but the top of his hair and the stuff around his ears needed some work.

Several people told me to try Toys R Us because they have cool, little cars the kids can sit in while they're being worked on and they get to watch a movie during the haircut. Great! Jake loves cars so I thought this would be perfect. We even picked the Cars movie for him to watch during the proceedings.

We watched a little boy from my class last year get his hair cut first. I kept saying to Jake, "Look at how much fun Joey is having! Are you going to have fun to?" And he said "YES!" very emphatically. Liar. He loved getting in the car chair, loved watching the Cars movie come on and that's when the love stopped. As soon as Miss Mary took a wet comb to his head the waterworks began. And they lasted the entire haircut. There was even some stomping of the feet. It was good times. I got to hand it to Miss Mary though, she did not let his tirade distract her. She was intent on giving him a proper haircut. She even brought out the clippers at the end to clean up the edges. I could have told her that was a mistake. But I don't think she would have listened to me. I swear I thought she was going to cut one of his ears off because he was jerking his head around trying to dodge those clippers so much. She tried to tell him they were a tickle machine, but he's no fool.

Finally, it was over and I have to say he looked pretty cute. I thought about not buying him the stuffed animal we had picked out beforehand to ensure that he would be good during the haircut, but it turns out he had cried and snotted all over it so we had to go ahead and purchase it. It's that old if you get snot on it you buy it rule.

I had noticed that Joey had gotten a lollipop after his haircut so I kept waiting for Miss Mary to offer one to Jake. She didn't. So after I paid for the haircut I just kind of looked at the lollipop basket and she said, "Oh, did you want him to have one?" I guess she only offers them to the kids who don't cry. But I said yes, I would like for him to have one and by the way can I have one too? Because although it wasn't chocolate, it was sugar and you can bet we both needed a fix after such a horrendous experience. Too bad Jake dropped his on the dirty floor shortly thereafter. But at least he walked out of the store with a new, slightly wet pet giraffe.

(I'll post some pictures of his new "do" later.)