Crazy Hair

My 12-year-old has been begging me to let him dye his hair green for months. (I think he really likes the Joker from Batman.)

I put it off for as long as I could -- not because I was against it, but because I knew it was a lot of work. (I try to steer clear of any extra work since I feel like I have enough on my plate as it is.)

Finally, I took my boys to Sally Beauty. The name of the store almost brought the green hair train to a grinding halt. Josiah stopped in the middle of the parking lot and said, "I'm NOT going in a beauty shop."

I said, "Well, that's where they sell the hair dye."

He paused to consider this predicament and finally walked toward the store again, mumbling, "Let's just make this quick."

The lure of crazy hair was too much for my 9-year-old to resist. We left the store with green hair dye for Kaden and blue for Josiah (I'm still not quite sure what changed Josiah's mind on the color.)

Being the newbie hairdresser that I am, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I started the hair transformations at 8 pm on a Saturday night. I finally finished at 11:30!

First, there was not a hint of green color in Kaden's light brown hair, after leaving the dye on for 30 minutes. Second, no one told me how hard it is to pull chunks of hair through a cap for bleached highlights! (I have to say, though, Josiah's highlights looked pretty good afterwards.)

Poor Kaden was devastated. He was really looking forward to showing off his crazy hair to his friends at church the next day. So we started over, bleaching his whole head this time. Then we put the green dye on. When we finished he looked like this . . .

He loved it! The best part was when he said, "Wow! I love how some of the hair is brown, some is yellow, and some is green."

I stifled a laugh: "Umm, ya, that's exactly what I meant to do."

This is Josiah's new look (it's hard to see but when the sun hits the highlights, it is very blue . . . oh & he doesn't like to smile for pictures anymore -- too cool for smiling, I guess):

The next morning at church (and everywhere we've been since), people couldn't take their eyes off of my boys. "What on earth happened?!" was a common reaction. I know most people might think I'm crazy to have done this to their hair, but it IS just hair after all.

What matters is that Josiah and Kaden like it. My boys absolutely LOVE their new look!

I'm just grateful that they both know that God loves them no matter what hair color they have.