Hair Today...Gone Tomorrow

Hold on to your horseshoes...because something crazy happened around here....

Yep. I chopped off my hair. Well, not all of it- I maybe lost four or five inches? But for me it was a pretty big deal. I haven't had "short" hair since my sophomore year of college...so um...yeah, a while. I have a bit of a hair comfort zone, and I tend to keep the same style, trim after trim: Long layers, side part, usually sideswept bangs. Every once in a while I get crazy and mess with the formula, (real bangs!) or knock people's socks off by taking it out of a ponytail, but for the better part of a decade I've kept it pretty predictable (hopefully predictably pretty?)

But then came the craziness of pregnancy hormones, and my poor hair was thrown for a loop. I'm normally a pretty heavy shedder (Dustin had no idea what he...or the shower drain...was in for when he married this mop), but for nine months I swear I didn't lose a single strand. I had heard that pregnancy often resulted in a thicker mane, and while I didn't notice it much at the time, in hindsight I realize how true that was for me. I wasn't exactly being asked to star in shampoo commercials, but my hair was more easy to work with, and just generally not as thin/frizzy/stringy/blah as normal. I worried that after I had the baby my locks would go back to their previous not-so-noteworthy state, but I don't think I was ready for the pendulum swing that happened 3 months (on the dot, I swear) after Piper was born. All of a sudden, I was shedding like a polar bear at the Miami Zoo. (Do they even have polar bears there? I suspect not....because they would probably be bald.) Every morning I would end up with a shower full, a hairbrush full, handfuls- well, full, of hair. It seemed my scalp was making up for lost time, and going into hair-loss hypermode, to balance out the year of follicular success. And after two months of this constant shedding, my mane was looking a little sad. Split ends, fuzzy strands, thin, limp locks. I was fighting against it, trying to straighten, curl, smooth or otherwise coax it into its former (relative) glory. But finally threw in the (hair)towel when I found a row of tiny Piper-length strands growing along my hairline in the front, and sprouting out of my part. My head had obviously given up, and rather than bothering to hold on to what we once knew, had decided to just start over, lining up the hair equivalent of shark teeth- another tiny row to take the place of the previous set. Trust me when I say this is only half as cute as it sounds. Which is already not-very.

So, long story long leads me to long hair short. I pinned some images of some celeb looks (yep, Tori Spelling makes more than one appearance there. No shame. Between she and Heidi Klum they have like 8 kids. Who better to be my hair role models?) put about five minutes of thought into it and told my stylist to make the cut (giving her the warning that I desperately wanted to avoid a "Mom-cut"...which is a vague but terrifying realm of lackluster bobs I'm not ready to cross into).

And I pretty much love it.

(and Piper seems to be a fan/still recognize me, so that's a plus). I can't stop the shedding, or magically make my hair thicker, and the baby hairs aren't going anywhere, but it's already a vast improvement. I'm still messing around with straight vs. wavy, and experimenting with how to style it, but I'm excited to have a new look (and an adorably stumpy ponytail).

Oh- and if it all fell out tomorrow? My little cowgirl was worth it. And from a vain mama like me, that's saying something.