October 9, 2003 - Thursday
We've been suggesting to Harry for a while now that he get Mary, Jeremy's baby-sitter, to cut his hair instead of me. Maybe I'm all right cutting hair, maybe I'm not, but it's just too easy for Harry to whine about it when I do it. Mary does Jeremy's hair, as well as his mother's, and Harry's certainly been at her house enough to be comfortable with her.

Today it happened. Harry and Jeremy were playing in her sand box and she and I were sitting there kind of waiting for the boys to be done. Mary said "Harry, needs a haircut," to both him and me, I think.
"Yeah," I answered. Then, right away I said, "Harry, did you want Mary to give you a haircut?"
He said "no," but it seemed to me that he actually considered it for a moment. So, I pushed a little. I've mentioned to Mary that we've tried to convince Harry to have her do it and she picked up on it right away.
"I do it really quickly," she told Harry.
"Yeah, Mary is a lot faster than I am, Harry. I think it's a good idea."
"No," he said again with a little more of a whine. We let it rest of a couple of minutes. I asked Mary on the side whether she would really want to do it know, as she seemed to be implying. She said she would and I pretty much decided I'd give it a shot.

I asked Harry a couple more times without much change in reaction, but somehow it seemed he wasn't fully committed to refusing. After a few minutes, remembering that Mary cuts Jeremy's hair while he watches TV, I said, "maybe you could watch the train video while Mary cut your hair." Harry started negotiating which one and I knew we had him.

Naturally, once it all started, Harry was absolutely fine. He did ask Mary once if she was done, but I usually hear that several times when I do it. Fortunately, she was almost done.

Harry was extremely proud when his mother noticed his new haircut.

One startling thing about this haircut is that we constantly are hearing how much Jeremy and Harry look alike, people asking if they are twins. With this new professionally done haircut, Harry looks significant older and, even though it's the same haircut as Mary gives Jeremy, a lot less like his brother. Maybe I wasn't so good cutting hair.


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