When I was pregnant, we wondered if we would have a boy or a girl.  I thought for SURE I would have a girl because I was craving sweets and getting wicked acid reflux and I had horrible morning sickness during the first trimester.

When we found out that we were having a boy…our EDDIE…we wondered what you would look like.  Would you have my pin-straight hair?  Or would you get Daddy’s curly locks?  We all were convinced you would have daddy’s crazy curls.

But then you wereborn…

with straight, brown hair.  Like fluffy silk flat again his head.  Just right for nuzzling when we cuddled in my hospital bed.

So we thought you would have straight brown hair like my brothers.  Your uncles.

But then…

Suddenly we had a little bald baby.  You lost all your brown hair.  You were our little cue ball…and we started to wonder when the blond whips appeared…will there be curls?

Your first birthday came around and we saw those blond whisps start to curl first around your ears.  Would the rest follow?

YES!  There they were!  And they grew and grew and grew!  I loved watching your hair flop and you bounded through the house or yard.

But soon it got out of control.  Daddy (and some others) would casually point out the hair in your eyes, the rat’s nest on the back of your  head, and how hard it was getting to comb properly.

And I had to admit it was true.  You couldn’t see and you cried when I combed your hair.  It just wasn’t very nice for you anymore.

So.

Against all of what my momma’s heart said, I took you to my cousin whom I trust with my locks, and asked her to give my baby his first hair cut at her mom’s house.

Eddie, you were as unsure about the whole thing as I was.  But you sat so nice while dad and I (and namna and bumpa (grandma and grandpa)…what?  Normal people don’t have a crowd at their baby’s first hair cut?   That is just us?) watched the curls fall.

I put some of those curls in a little baggie.  To keep forever to remember the floppy-haired toddler that ran through my days.

And just like that…my baby was gone and in front of me sat a little boy.  A little boy who still wanted his Lamby and pipey when we got home.  And who still wants to sit on my lap and watch ABC’s on youtube.  And who still kisses me and says, “Wuv oo, ma ma.”

You just also get haircuts now…and a grape sucker as a treat for being good.

You are still my little boy.

I know this.

But you are not my baby anymore.

Who knew that a haircut could make a baby into a boy?

I guess this is yet another Momma Lesson Learned.

This week’s prompt was to either begin or end with the words “Lesson Learned”.

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I may have entered Eddie in a celebrity look-alike contest via Mommy Shorts where I compare him to Nick Nolte’s mug shot.  This may have also been part of the reason the haircut was needed.  Allegedly.  Ahem.  Anyway, go vote (you have to “like” Mommy Shorts and then “like” Eddie’s pic in the album) so he doesn’t hate me someday.