OmegaMom

I have always admired the smooth, sleek elegance of French braids, but they intimidated me.  Surely something that looks so…classic…must be difficult to do.  So when I had long hair, I contented myself with (occasionally) doing regular braids, and merely wisted from afar at more snazzy dos.

Then the dotter arrived in our life.  For the first few years, her hair was too short.  Then, when it became longer, it was the central point of the Hair Drama, in which mere combing became torture for both of us.

Somewhere along the line, we both learned how to cope with the hair combing, and suddenly it was no longer torture.  And her hair was long.  New vistas of hair fiddling opened up before me, and I was able to rediscover basic braids, variations on ponytails, buns, and twists.

But still, French braids seemed an arcane art.  In her preschool, the dotter had one teacher who was adept at French braids, and she would occasionally arrive home with her hair sleeked into the lovely style.  I would admire and ooh and ahh, and secretly seethe with jealousy that Miss R. (who was young and cute and perky and beloved by the dotter) also had this feminine mystery down pat.

I tried once, following a how-to from the internet, and it looked clumsy and messy.  My plan was to keep practicing, but there was never time in the evenings–when an hour or so spent dealing with frustration would seem okay.  And then the dotter had the incident with the bubble gum, and her hair was shorn, and there was a hiatus on hair-fiddling.

But now her hair has grown out again, very suddenly seeming long enough to do things with.  We’ve been doing ponytails and basic braids again, and one of her camp counselors sent her home one day with a French braid.  So I decided this evening to try again.

As you can see, it’s not “smooth, sleek, and elegant”.  The part is ragged.  The hair joins are rumply and fumbled.

And her bangs, which she is determined to grow out, are every which way.

BUT…it’s a start.  She liked it, and wouldn’t let me take them out and re-do them.  Somewhere along the line, I suddenly realized how to grab the new hair without getting my fingers tangled up, and it became easier.  Once I get the finger movements down, then I can concentrate on making it smooth.  And then I can try a one-braid design.  Or two braids merging into one.

The dotter, by the way, was thoroughly engrossed in Hann@h M0ntana on YouTube, a rare treat.  We now have a movie of her dancing to “The Best of Both Worlds”, which, alas, is stuck on the other camera, because I can’t seem to find the proper USB cord, and can’t find the third camera to dump the memory chip into (we do have the proper USB cord for the other two cameras, but the second camera, which I have the cord to, uses the other kind of memory chip…wasn’t all of this supposed to be easy and plug-n-play?).