Do it yourself toddler haircuts

I like to be cheap thrifty with certain things. One of those things is cutting Annika's hair. We have a little children's hair salon right outside our neighborhood that I thought may be cute to take Annika to until I realized it was going to cost us like $20 to have someone else cut like 1/8th of an inch off her hair.

Whenever I've had bangs (which hasn't been in like 5 years and prior to that was like high school and that was the first time since 5th grade) I've always trimmed them myself and if my friend's had bangs I'd trim them. I'd like to think that if I actually went to school for hair I'd probably be pretty decent at it.

I've been trimming Annika's hair since she was about 5 months old. The hair on the top of her hair was really thin when she was little and she had this crazy mullet in the back that was super long. The first time I did it I wet her hair and just cut it carefully straight across while Josh held her still. We cut that crazy mullet at least 3 times the first year just because it was so much longer than any of the rest of her hair.

When we went to Arizona back in April I didn't want to have a ton of pictures of Annika with hair in her face so I trimmed her bangs since they weren't really that long and she refuses to wear hair clips. Since then about every 2 months I trim like 1 millimeter off of them just to keep them healthy since we want them to grow out. Currently they're just below her nose. We've been able to get her to keep a hair clip in about 70% of the time to keep the hair out of her face.

This weekend I decided she needed her hair evened out a bit. The hair on the sides was much shorter than the back, again, that mullet in the back tends to grow faster. Annika has some natural curl to her hair only at the ends so I flat iron it prior to cutting it. Last time I did this I allowed her to sit in my bathroom sink and play with some little decorative soaps I have. This time Josh distracted her while I straighted, very, very carefully with my flat iron. I have a Chi and they heat up fast! I didn't want to burn her so after I straightened a section I had to hold it away from her with my hand before just setting it down. For me I feel like it is easier to cut her hair totally dry than doing it wet.

After I had her hair perfectly straight I trimmed the sides just a tiny bit to make sure it was healthy. Then I started on the left side evening the back out with the sides. I did the middle which took off about 1/2 an inch and then the right side. I combed it all, made sure her head was straight and trimmed any extra little pieces. Then I had her face me to be sure the left and right sides matched. Then again I combed the back to be sure nothing was left.

Then after her shower while her hair was wet I did my last check of length and everything looked good! I know most people prefer cutting hair wet but I just don't because Annika's hair flips out and curls too much at the ends even while wet, flat ironing it is the only way to keep it straight.

This is the best picture I could get of her, her hair is about shoulder length now and super cute looking! She's trying to lift the glass table here:



You can see that some of the sides are still a bit shorter than the rest and that we're really trying to train those bangs to stay to the side!