Curly Hair Girl

Have you seen a close up photo of our little farm girl?



When people see her for the first time, they gasp and say, “Where did she get those curls?”  It’s a good question because nobody else in the family has curls like this! In fact, when she was born, it was the first thing we noticed about her:  little curls plastered to the side of her little wet head.  (I'll spare you that photo!)

Here’s a picture of her when she was only 18 months old:



And just for the sake of  comparison, here are two pictures of the other of the little farmhands at the same age:

No comparison!  So where DID she get that hair?  Papa the farmer has straight hair and my waves could be called “weak” at best…

I love her hair!  It is so easy to make her look pretty, because she is already so pretty!  Look at these intricate up-dos (above and below):



Those are just ordinary ponytails!  But they don’t look ordinary on her, because of those pretty spiral curls!


But alas, it takes pains to be beautiful (I’ve heard).  And that is certainly the case with Miss-Curly-Top.  She spends so much time playing outside and once in a while she’ll come in with big nasty knots in her hair that can only be described as “rats nests.”  This is what she looked like last night:

I can remember getting knots like this in my hair as a little girl.  I can remember getting some so bad that my mother finally had to just cut them out.  So I imagine many mothers must be faced with this difficulty!

Here’s the system I use to get those nasty knots out:  First we buy shampoo and conditioner that is specially formulated for curly hair.  I’d like to start  making my own shampoo and conditioner, but I’m just not there yet.  So, we wash her hair, then put conditioner in it.  I put a lot of conditioner on the knot and let it sit while she plays in the bathtub for a while.

Then I come back and I comb the rest of her hair.  The rest of her hair might have knots in it too, but I leave the worst knots for last.  Somehow we are both more encouraged if we know we’re on the very last knot!  I’ll take a small piece of hair in my hand.  I start about an inch away from the bottom and I comb the hair downwards.  Then I start a little higher on the same section of hair and comb downwards.  I keep repeating this until I’m all the way at the top and there are no knots left.  She puts her hand up close to her skull and holds the hair, too.  That way it doesn’t hurt as much when the comb is tugging on it. 
As hard as I try to make it not hurt, all that combing does hurt.  When she was really little we had a little poem we would repeat to help her not cry:

“Knots, Knots, Go Away!

Don’t come back another day!”

And after about a half hour of combing the various sections of her hair, she looks like this:

Much better!