Getting Rid of a Rat's Nest

I have a love hate relationship with my hair.  I love that I have hair.  I'm thankful for that.  I'm also thankful that I have thick hair.   I have a lot of options when it comes to hair styles because I have so much hair to play with.  Not that I style my hair.  Styling my hair was left behind years ago.  Other things that I love about my hair are that it is strong and long.  I can go almost a whole year without getting my hair cut and my ends won't split.  Keep in mind that I'm not styling it, so I'm sure that helps.

But like I said, I have a love hate relationship with my hair.  My hair is neither straight nor curly.  It lives in a wavy purgatory.  I hate how thick my hair is.  It is impossible to blow dry my hair without breaking a sweat (You try to blow dry your hair for an hour without sweating.).   And even if I managed to not sweat during the blow dry, I will definitely sweat when I go to iron it out since my hair is so frizzy.  Living in the hot humid South doesn't help much.  Currently I'm in a hair rut.  Ponytails, buns and braids are in a constant rotation.

I spent a lot of my childhood wishing that I had different hair.  I wished that I had blonde hair and red hair.  I wished that it was curly.  My mom would curl my hair when I was younger and my hair was finer and thinner. It was pretty straight back then and it wouldn't hold curls very well.  As I got older I longed for the hairstyles that I saw in magazines.  With high hopes I would go and ask the hair dresser to make me look like the glamorous women on those magazine.  Many a time I was disappointed by the end result.  Many years would go by before I realized that my hair is just different and some styles, beautiful as they may be, don't work well with the hair that I've got.

I wish I could say that I've come a long way with my opinion of my hair.  I have come a short way.  I embrace it.  I put up with it.  One day I'll be able to devote time to it.  Time that it deserves.  For now it's on the back burner.  On the front burner, however, is Annie's hair.

Girl has got a hot mess of hair!  Her hair is quite cute.  It is getting longer and it is fine and curly.  But lately her hair has not been so cute.  In the mornings she wakes up with this:

wowsers!

And to be quite honest, I don't know what to do with it!  I've brushed it.  That doesn't help at all.  I've put it into little pig tails, but I only feel like I'm covering up her hair, much like I cover up my own hair.  So on a quest to help her have more good hair days, I sought help from my Facebook friends.  I got a lot of great responses to my plea for help.  But I was incredibly blessed when my curly haired, hair stylist friend, Rachel, gave me some great tips and step by step procedures to help maintain Annie-cakes cutie curls throughout the day.

One thing that I wasn't doing was conditioning her hair.  Another thing I was guilty of was over washing her hair.  So we will start to space out the washings and replace some of them with good rinses and conditionings.  Today we went out and got some natural conditioner with argan oil.  During bath time we tried it out.

What a world of difference!

Another crime I was committing was brushing her hair with a brush.  I should just use my fingers to brush it out.  And finally, I got a smoothing serum to put on her damp hair after the bath.  It's made with coconut milk and smells like summer (I love coconut smells for this reason alone.).  And here's the end result:

So pleased!!

She already got her first compliment.  Orry said, "Annie, your hair looks like gold!".   Score one for the girls!

I hope that Annie grows up loving her hair.  She's got a great head of hair so far and I'll do my best not to mess it up!  I'll love her hair, no matter what she does with it.  But I really hope I can encourage her to love her hair for what it is.