It was one day bound to happen

Before - 1st day of school

I was in the bathroom one morning last week when Morgan knocked on the door. I opened it to her smiling face, hair bedecked with an assortment of clips.

"Oooh!" I appropriately cooed. "How pretty! You did such a good .... wha-a-a?"

I spied something amiss. I looked closer. Oh, the horror! The hairdo was NOT pretty. The clips were disguising bangs clipped ever-so-efficiently to the scalp. I responded with the stupidest question a parent can ask, repeating it several times as if the answer would miraculously change.

"Morgan, what did you do?!?"

She knew immediately that she could no longer show off her work with pride and ran crying to her room. I persuaded her to come out eventually, myself a mixture of laughing, crying, and scolding. I discovered the extent of the damage as chunks of hair fell into my fingers, but somehow collected myself enough to take a couple of pictures.

As you can see by her refusal to look at the camera, her shame was complete. I dragged her from her hiding place in her bed to take her to the salon to see how we could remedy the 'do. She kept her blankie securely covering her head until the nice lady at the salon coaxed it off and previewed the damage. Her first suggestion was a pixie cut, but I couldn't bear it. So we opted for pulling some hair from farther back to create the illusion of bangs and then evening up the back in a little a-line. Considering what she was given to repair, I think the end result was all right. We can work with it -- at least for the next three to four months while her bangs grow back.