Haircuts are not exactly something that Anja is known for liking. Or even putting up with. Heck, even a sucker and Dora historically won't work to calm this girl down when a paid "professional" is within a 10 mile radius. Of course, we have been taking her to the internationally acclaimed "Kids Hair." Silly me. I thought the employees there actually knew that they'd be working with kids when they applied. Must have been a small applicant pool.
So we have been putting off Anja's haircut for quite some time. She was starting to look like Cousin It and she knew it. She has even mentioned to me that she needs a haircut. Again, I remind you that she screams bloody murder during any salon visits. I'm not sure what she was complaining about. Her hair was fine!
So, since joining Lifetime Fitness, we've discovered that they have 2 things that should be next to each other in the brochure: a salon and a zero-depth pool.
Enter bribery.
With promises of swimming with Mommy and Daddy firmly planted in her head if she let a woman she never met before cut off her glorious locks, we got her in the building. Heck, we made it all the way to the waiting area in the salon.
Enter Melissa.
Brave, patient Melissa.
Re-enter typical haircut-hating Anja, complete with partial cookie in hand, refusing to let go of Mommy and denying Melissa's attempts to put a "bib" on her.
After much dancing around the special-big-girl-haircut-chair-complete-with-a-cushion-just-for-you and a big-girl-haircut-bib with cars (remember, she loves cars!), the cushion was removed, Mommy sat on the chair (with a "bib", but not the one with cars, I'm sad to say) with Anja facing her. A chocolate treat bribe and an iPad playing Diego later, the hair cut commenced. Melissa quickly hacked off several inches while Anja asked about Melissa's little boy (no wonder she knew what bribes to use!), giggled at her new hair in the mirror, and told Daddy that he needs a haircut, too. When Melissa finished, Anja looked adorable and knew it. She told us that she had fun and that she would come back to let Melissa cut her hair again. Poor...er, lucky Melissa!
Anja's feet were barely on the ground before she was heading off to the family changing area to put on her "soup soup" (swimsuit). She's no dummy.
And later in the pool, after repeatedly dumping buckets of water over our heads and telling us that she was giving Dan a haircut (complete with chocolate treats), Dan managed to dump about half of one of the buckets down the back of her head. She immediately turned around and yelled at him until she saw that there was still water in his bucket. That stopped her dead in her tracks as the gears started turning. All she could say was "Daddy, how you do that?!" Pretty sure he blamed the toddler that had just gone by. Soon enough, Kif will be here to blame. Poor kid.
