Baby curls!

     “Hair, hair, it’s everywhere…” ~Graham Tether in The Hair Book.  I don’t know how Mr. Tether did it, especially since the book was written way back in 1979, but that line must have been written about my family.  I, myself, have a ton of thick, coarse, black, curly hair.  My two older daughters both inherited heads full of beautiful ringlets, though theirs are lighter in color.  My oldest son has unruly auburn waves of hair that grow so fast we cannot keep it looking neat and tidy no matter how often we cut it.  My younger son sports a buzz cut, only because that is the easiest way to tame his coarse, curly, brown locks.  Even Tim, whose father and brothers were all pretty much bald by their mid-20’s, has a pretty nice head of brown hair.  He keeps his very short to avoid the inevitable wild waves that have a mind of their own.  In fact, the only one without much hair around here is the baby, who at seven months old, has just a bit of dark brown peach fuzz covering her little round head.  Ironically, the baby seems to be the only one in the house who really loves all our crazy, curly hair.  She is so enamored with hair she seems always to have a fist full of it.  Most of the time, it has been forcefully ripped from my head.  Once in a while, she will get her chubby baby hands near one of her sister’s heads and they become her latest victim.  There is evidence of her hair fascination wrapped around her fingers, and wrapped around her toes.  There are stray strands in her crib and all over her soft fluffy blankets.  I have lost so much of my hair to her little baby grip, I am surprised I do not have bald spots all over my head! 
    Lately, I have been worried about hair for even more reasons that just the constant loss of my own.  I have started to worry that, somehow, though I cannot begin to imagine how, the baby is not going to share the telltale family curls.  Her hair, though there is still so little of it, does not seemed to curl or twist at all, even when it is wet from her bath.  Though I never loved, or even liked, my own hair growing up, I have come to appreciate curls now that my children are sporting them on their adorable little heads too.  Curls are just a given in our family, at least so far.  If the baby does not get curls of her own, I fear what her hair might look like as she grows up- I have never styled hair that does not curl.  I do not have a clue what to do with straight tresses.  So, though I have not lost much sleep over baby’s lack of curls (only baby’s own lack of sleep), I really have been a tiny bit concerned.  But then, thanks be to God, the other morning as I was going over some schoolwork with the “big” kids I noticed one tiny little flip of hair on the back of the baby’s head.  We all got so excited when I showed it to her siblings.  Her sister immediately reached out to touch the miniature curl and it fell as quickly as her little face did when we frightened the poor, confused baby with our squeals of delight.
     Only time will tell what our beautiful baby will look like when her hair finally does come in but for now, I guess I’ll just have to be content with the fact that she does have some curls- I just wish they were on her head instead of in her hand!