Gratitude Sunday

Today I am so thankful for my little people. They drive me crazy sometimes (last night being one of those times), but as much as they pretend to hate each other, they don’t. Last night Tyler was about to knock out an obnoxious, (unflattering description) girl at the ASU Volleyball game. All the kids wanted to see Sparky, and she kept pushing up to the front and getting in his face yelling. She almost knocked Daija & another of the younger girls from our team down in the process, and Tyler was poking tapping her arm, “Little girl. EXCUSE ME. Little girl.” Once he could finally get up to Sparky, he got his ticket autographed with Halle’s number.

And I must also give thanks that Daija came home yesterday (YAY) and her hair was looking great (WOO HOO)!

Fun Friday

 Don’t need a trip to the beauty shop. ‘Cause I love what I got on top. It’s curly and it’s brown and it’s right up there! You know what I love? That’s right, my hair! I really love my hair!

Spiral Piggy-Back Braid & Three Strand Twists

Daija is spending the week with Biker Grandma & Grandpa… this is the hairstyle she went with. From what I hear, it’s holding up really well and has been very popular around town. We’ll see how it looks when I pick her up on Saturday! Fingers crossed… you know we’ve had trouble when Daija went to visit family in years past!

 

Gratitude Sunday

Today’s grats will be short and sweet… I’m driving Daija up to visit Biker Dad today & have some last minute packing and hair to do so we can get this show on the road.

• Tyler goes back to school this week. That boy has eaten the better part of four loaves of bread and a jar of peanut butter this week.
• The girls have fall break this week. It will be nice not to worry about hair or be rushing a little girl who had time for lip gloss but forgot to brush her teeth until it was time to leave. *SMH*
• Speaking of Biker Dad, I am also very thankful for him and my Aunt Laura. It’s been a joy having them in my life this past year.
• I must also give thanks to my Aunt Joyce, who has also been a joy to me. She never stopped hoping we’d be reunited and never stopped looking for me. Had it not been for her hope and faith, we all would be missing so much.

 

Daija’s Hair Doodles

I need to find the charger for the digital camera so I can get a better video, but this is how we refresh our Doodles (check out the curly hair page for more pics & details) in the mornings.

Crazy Hair Day

written by Love Isn’t Enough contributor Catherine Anderson
originally published in Hip Mama Magazine (Issue 44-Creativity Issue-October 2009)

When crazy hair day is posted
as this week’s Friday activity
(last week was a picture of your pet,
the week prior a souvenir…)
you, the mother of the only
African-American child
in the preschool class
has the right to
pause
and consider
your approach.

 

Do you comment,
boycott,
suggest an alternative,
adapt
or educate?
You consider
each of the above
in three second
intervals
and land
on the combination
you are most familiar with:
adapt and educate

 

When your son’s hair
does not invite
barrettes, gel, or braids
you have reason to consider
the value of
crazy hair day.

 

On the Thursday before
you mention to the teacher in your most
diplomatic
engaging
and cautiously insistent
voice that it would be appreciated if the class
could consider options for all kinds of hair
for success tomorrow.

 

 

Excuse me?

 

Well, crazy hair day can be a little
complicated for tight curly hair
like his.

 

A flash of realization washes over her face.

 

Oh my, I hadn’t considered..

 

It’s fine.
We’ll figure it out.
They have hair sprays
you tell her, in pink and blue..

 

Your scour the shelves of the drug store
and explain to the manager
wearing the toupee
your predicament.
45 minutes later
as the groceries melt in the trunk
you find it,
the perfect solution
tucked behind the blush
and the tanning cream

 

***

 

Three days later and Sam still has
silver sparkle intergalactic eyeshadow
in his hair-
in five
long
Star Wars pilot Darth Vader
stripes.

It was a huge success.
and lasted longer then the braids,
the gel, the rubber bands and
all the other
Caucasian hair accouterments.

 

Crazy.

Crazy Hair Day | Love Isn’t Enough – on raising a family in a colorstruck world.

six days with daddy = eleven hours of damage control

So today could probably be considered a “co-parenting fail”

I went to the airport to pick up the girls and their dad. I saw my baby girl’s head and just LOST IT. Halle’s hair was cornrowed neatly, and Daija looked like Orphan Annie on a bad day. From what I can gather, by the time anybody bothered with her hair, it was so matted & tangled she cried when they tried to comb it… which means they tried to comb it dry.

Oh, I was so mad. I lit into What’s His Name with a vengeance… and pointed out that Daija had spent a week with my stepmom and a week with my sister over the summer & didn’t come home looking like this… AND THEY’RE WHITE PEOPLE… as in DAY-GLO ANGLO. People don’t come much whiter.

I washed, conditioned it twice, then left conditioner on in a cap for 2+ hours, then conditioned it again… and still had to cut a couple matts out of her hair. I’ve never had to do that with either of the girls before… I think I cried more than Daija did while I was combing this mess out.

Black, White, and the Cornrow Inbetween « Braids, Beads, Truth

I’m adding another resource to the hair « curlykidz, but in light of all the backlash in the media and blogosphere about Zahara Pitt-Jolie’s hair, I was very touched by the following…  

I found the process of styling my black daughter’s hair profoundly humbling.

“I am not my hair. I am not this skin.” India Arie

It is not that I am bad at it, I am actually pretty good to be honest. Each Sunday, I receive the highest praise possible for my efforts from the people who should know: African American women. Still, each time I pick up the comb and place my hands on one of my daughters’ heads I feel a little nervous.

“What if I don’t do a good job? What if my baby is ashamed of her white mother’s creation?”

Because I know hair matters.

It matters because it is such a definitive expression of the African race and all their descendants scattered by the diaspora across the globe. It is both the pride of heritage and so often the focal point of the pain of discrimination. It is at once a deep heart’s cry to be validated as the unique creation of God but at the same time to not be defined by any one characteristic of one’s race.

It matters because as a white family, we had a choice to make when we brought these Haitian daughters home. Would we strip them of their culture and force them into our white world, or would we lay aside our own and meet them there. Black, white, Haitian, and American. Descendants of the oppressed and descendants of the oppressor woven into a family.

And a white mother with a cornrow in her hand.

 

 

 

via Black, White, and the Cornrow Inbetween « Braids, Beads, Truth.

 

via Black, White, and the Cornrow Inbetween « Braids, Beads, Truth.

The Souls of Black Girls

About The Souls of Black Girls

The Souls of Black Girls is a provocative news documentary that takes a critical look at media images — how they are instituted, established and controlled. The documentary also examines the relationship between the historical and existing media images of women of color and raises the question of whether they may be suffering from a self-image disorder as a result of trying to attain the standards of beauty that are celebrated in media images.

The documentary features candid interviews with young women discussing their self-image and social commentary from Actresses Regina King and Jada Pinkett Smith, PBS Washington Week Moderator Gwen Ifill, Rapper/Political Activist Chuck D, and Cultural Critic Michaela Angela Davis, among others. The Souls of Black Girls is a piece that attempts to provoke honest dialogue and critical thinking among women of color about media images and our present condition—internally and externally.

via The Souls of Black Girls.

The “authentic” Black Barbie…

Cali Girl & Friends

OK, I know, I know.  I used the word AUTHENTIC and BARBIE in the same sentence.

Stop laughing.

Breathe.

Breathe again.

I wish that I could be as excited about the So In Style Barbie line as I was about the Cali dolls. And I might be a little more generous in my critique if they weren’t being billed as “authentic” representations of the African American community and culture.

Now we have a new line of Black Barbies, the So In Style African American Barbie dolls. I’ll be the first to admit that the original blonde Barbie is no more an authentic representation of white women than these dolls are… but I can’t remember in my lifetime ever hearing anyone, white, black, or pink with purple polka dots, assert that she was authentic.

Mamalicious! Hair…Raising

Hair Today…by Deesha Philyaw via Mamalicious! » Blog Archive » Hair…Raising.

Today is Hair Day. I will wrangle two-year-old Peyton in order to remove the beads from her hair, unbraid it, wash it, rebraid it, and put the beads back on—all in the face of her protests, periodic snack and meal breaks, and the necessary Pull-up changes. I will pray for her to fall asleep, but she won’t until about the last 20 minutes or so. The whole process will take the better part of our day.

At my house, hair day has a long and troubled history. For years, despite countless beauty products, gadgets, and more patience than I ever knew I had, my older daughter Taylor #now 7# dreaded hair day. Hair Day meant hour upon hour of having me wash, blow dry, comb, part, braid—mess with—her hair, while she had to sit and hold her head just so. And it hurt. I can hear the uninitiated asking, Why go through all of this trouble? Well, I don’t have much choice in the matter. In a culture that rarely includes my daughters in its beauty standard, I must counter that narrow standard with affirmation. I want my girls to look neat and feel positively about themselves, including their hair. Just as basic care for long hair by definition requires more time than caring for short hair, black hair that is not chemically treated requires a lot of TLC. I hope that in time my girls understand that all of the time and attention we give to their hair is borne of necessity and not vanity.

As I get ready to mess with little girls’ hair, I thought I’d share this blog.  I won’t be doing whole heads this evening, since the veil braids I did last week are holding up nicely, and I’ll be “doodling” the back of the girls hair, far less stress on the scalp than braiding… but still the time that takes means my announcement that we’ll need to start on hair soon was met with groans and protest.

via Mamalicious! Hair…Raising.

Braids & Beads

Daija in Beads & Braids

I got an email from a friend the other day.  She’d been looking at the pictures from our Santa Barbara trip, and her daughter asked why the girls wore beads in their hair.  My friend started to respond, “Because they like it that way,” but decided to pose the question to me instead, to learn why we braid and bead.  I decided to make a blog of it, because I am sure that other ladies I know have good answers for this that may differ from my own, so maybe we can all learn something new.

Well, my friend’s first response is the right one from the girls perspective.  They like beads in their hair.  Halle always spends the first several days after hair is braided tossing her hair around her shoulders like she’s in an Herbal Essence commercial.  Daija likes beads because Halle likes beads.  And I like the beads too… when I was a little girl, probably around 2nd grade, I wanted to be black more than anything so I could wear beads.  And I still think they’re cute.  But aside from being decorative, they have a more practical purpose, which I explain to Ro every time he asks me why I put beads in the girls’ hair (he doesn’t like them). 

Halle has to take a bath and have her hair completely soaked and conditioned in the morning in order for me to comb it.  Taking a bath the night before isn’t even an option for her unless her hair is braided.  During the summer when she spends a lot of time in the swimming pool, it’s a real pain in the rump for her to have to take a shower at night to rinse off the chlorine and another one in the morning so her hair can be combed.  Between all that rinsing and the sun exposure, her hair can get very dry in the summer.  Plus, she has eczema, and two baths a day on top of chlorine really does a number on dry skin.  Daija’s hair, while not as fine as Halle’s, is much, much dryer and breaks much more easily.  So in addition to not using shampoo and the satin pillow cases and the satin nightcaps, I braid the girls’ hair to help protect it from breakage.  

Curly hair, whether thick and coarse or thin and fine, is very delicate.  It is prone to dryness, and breaks easily.  The more it is combed, the more opportunity for breakage.  An easy remedy for this is braids.  Some textures of hair can be braided and not even need rubber bands to keep the braids together.  Other textures of hair not only need to be fastened at the end prevent unraveling.  With finer textures, the braids themselves tend to kink in funny directions because they are so light.  I use the beads to add weight to the braids, so that they hang straight down and won’t wound up bent in whatever direction they went during sleep.  Even braided heads can wake up with the bedhead look

she slays me…

 

OK, so Daija was sporting a fairly low maintenance hair style today… the front of her hair gathered into a ponytail on top, and the back gathered into a ponytail in back.  Several dress up changes had done some damage to the top ponytail, so after I pulled her pajamas on, I set out to redo the top ponytail.  As I’m trying to gather her hair all up on top of her head, she looks at me with a frown and says,

 

“Why you doing my hair like a giraffe?”

Vent I & II

Vent I: Bead Thingamabobs

OK, I have no idea if that’s the ‘technical’ name for them, but remember the other week when I went to Mid-K and got the scarves? Wound up going back for satin bonnet thingies (work WAY better, btw) and bought a ton of beads, as well as this super-size, super flexible, thingamabob to thread hair thru the beads with. It’s soooo much better than the bitty little threaders that come with the beads, not just because it’s more flexible, but because you can fit more beads on it if you want to thread a lot of beads.

So I let Daija have the bead threaders that came with the beads, cuz they’re pretty useless and she wanted them (they had flowers on the end).

Guess what I can’t find? My super duper thingamabob, OR any of the rinky dink thingamabobs.

dammit.

Vent II: My name is not Mapquest

Some of you know about Ro and his sense of direction (or lack thereof) from other rants.  I find it irritating that he’s lived in Phoenix for as long as he has and seems to have no sense of direction or where things are in relation to each other.  I swear on Herbie’s dear departed soul I was ready to wring his neck earlier.  He keeps calling me to ask me how to get from the west side to  a car rental place I’ve never actually gone to, but that he was at just a week ago when he got this rental car he was returning tonight.  And even more disturbing, the place he needs to take it is less than half a mile from the west entrance of (drum roll please) THE FUCKING AIRPORT.  Like he doesn’t know how to get there?!?!?!  Quit calling, I WAS AT WORK AN HOUR LATE ***AGAIN*** AND I REALLY NEED TO NUKE THESE LEFTOVERS or LISTEN TO SOMEONE READ or CHECK SOMEONE’S HOMEWORK or maybe just TAKE A PISS BREAK, something I don’t get all that often these days.

via Vent I & II – CURLYGURL’s MySpace Blog | Cyndi–s Jewels.

Braids and Headscarves

January 8, 2006 – Sunday 9:24 PM

Braids and Headscarves

Current mood: aggravated

So first of all, let me say that no, I can’t french braid. Apparently this is a major faux paux for the mother of biracial girls. Well, I didn’t learn to do it as a child, and never had reason to when I only had one child to care for, or even when I only had two children to care for. By the time Halle had enough hair to braid, she was almost four years old, I was leaving her father, I was buying a house, raising my adult sister, and I had a son going through ADHD hell and an infant who never left the sling and seemed to be permanently attached to my left tit. I am, in case you didn’t know, left handed. Not to mention, Halle’s hair is superfine, so it’s not like I’d be learning on hair that actually has enough substance to freakin’ hold onto. And Ro may be back in the picture, but he’s out on contract so it’s not too much different than if we were still separated.

So there. I can’t french braid, I don’t cornrow, I’m not particularly inclined to learn, and I’m not ashamed of it.