Pain is Beauty...Not!

When Charlotte was born, I thought she had a lot of hair.  Since I had never had a baby before, any hair seemed like a good amount to me.  In this video my proud mama eyes see a lot of hair on my brand new baby's head, probably already gauging whether or not I could stick bows in it.  At the same time, however, I was also very concerned about Charlotte's temperature (which Rob said was the most recurring of my neurotic new mom worries), so before she wore bows, she wore a lot of hats.

My mom and I took many last minute shopping trips in my last weeks of pregnancy looking for bows with velcro that we hoped Charlotte could wear right away.  Since her little bit of hair fell out rather quickly, however, we introduced the headband.

One day, I took Charlie on a shopping trip without a bow in this outfit...

....and some 80 year old guy thought she was a boy.  After that, we never left the house in that same outfit unless she had a pink headband on too.

8 months later, we are still working on growing hair.  The problem is that all of her headbands that fit her sweet little newborn head are too small now and leave big red marks if she wears them for more than 5 minutes.  I have looked everywhere for bigger sized headbands and even had friends give me some of their kiddos' headbands, hoping that something would fit.  I stretched out headbands on the bottoms of tupperware containers for days at a time thinking that if they were big enough, no marks would be left.  But sure enough, after about 15 minutes, I'd pull the headband back and there would be a big red mark.  

Charlotte never tried to take the headbands off or seemed to cry because of them, but it just looked like it hurt to me.  I decided to ask our pediatrician about it, whose word I tend to hold in the highest regard - Rob has reminded me before that she isn't the ultimate authority on everything...and I begged to differ :) - and she told me that it's probably too tight if it leaves a mark.  After that, I stopped putting headbands on Charlotte all together unless it was for a really quick picture.

Of course, we all know the old adage that "pain is beauty," and I've quoted that to myself before.  But I just couldn't bring myself to apply that phrase to my sweet girl.  Besides, why should beauty be painful?  My flip-flop-collecting, pajama-loving, tank-top-wearing self usually puts comfort and convenience before beauty anyway :)  But I couldn't get over the idea that I wanted bows in Charlie's hair, and her hair just wasn't growing fast enough.  

Enter a $5 off any purchase coupon at Babies R Us.  I can't tell you how many trips I've taken to Babies R Us, and I know that I've looked at bows and headbands there before, with no success.  On this trip, however, I was looking for something that was only five dollars and.... Voila! I stumbled across an already opened package of headbands.  Thinking to myself that they would probably be too small, I absentmindedly put one on Charlotte's head and..... Voila again!  It fit!  I was almost dancing around the store, I was so excited.  

So, hip-hip-hooray, Charlie has bows in her hair but no marks on her head!

All the headbands have the same flower on them, so I'm going to cut some of them off so I can clip other bows and flowers to them, like this....  (also, notice the hair in the sunlight - it's growing, slow but steady!)

I just need to find my needle and thread.  Or maybe I'll wait and take them with me to Mom's house next week :)