A different kind of haircut

A few days ago, E came to me at rest time and asked if she could cut her baby doll's hair.  Now first off, I was VERY happy that she had come to ask me and had not gone and done it on her own.  Now the doll in question was one that had hair and if you are a girl, you probably remember how nappy and unlovely most doll hair becomes after a while.  And there's no way that I know of to redeem it.  So it already looked really bad and I figured a hair cut wasn't going to make it look any worse.  And again, I was thrilled that she had asked permission.  So I said yes.  It's her doll and I let her go for it.  (Although I did first make sure she understood that because it is a doll and not alive, the hair will not grow back... so whatever she did would be permanent.)  Sister R was giddy with excitement and the prospect of actually being allowed to do this.  :)  So off they ran to take care of the doll.  I finished up what I was doing (which took maybe 5 minutes) and then went to go see the goings on.  Here's the scene I came upon...

Notice how the doll is in the booster seat and the chair is on a blanket.  This is how I have often cut the little boys' hair.  :)  I was told she was being a big girl and didn't need to be buckled in.  E is snipping away and the doll ends up with this odd sticking up short hair.  Neither girl really likes it so they agree they should just cut it all off and make her bald.  :)  (Yes there are lots of smilies... I thought this was all extremely amusing.)  The thing with dolls and hair is that you can't make them completely bald because there are spots on in the scalp where the hair comes out and short of shaving the doll or making big holes in her head, you can't make her bald.  So instead she has these odd spots of hair.  I didn't take a picture of the 'after' but you can imagine it is a sad sight.  Surprisingly, the girls didn't get upset or say anything negative about it. 

That afternoon, I repeated several times (making sure all children heard more than once) that this was a special thing that E was given permission to do and that she had ASKED.  I would not be allowing them to cut every doll's hair and scissors are meant for cutting paper.  But there might be a time in the future where they were given permission again to cut a doll's hair.  

So then I coach her through the clean up (and agree to wash the doll's clothes) and the girls go about their play.  

My hope is that because they've seen the results, maybe the idea is out of their systems and we won't have to address this again until baby E gets the idea in her head.

I'm especially thankful that it was E's idea and E's doll.  Did I mention how giddy R was?  That makes me laugh just thinking about it.  Never a dull moment in the Lapful house!