"Lock the doors and close the blinds -- we're going for a ride..."

Here's a list of the three hardest things in the world:

(1) Achieving cold table-top nuclear fusion
(2) Drawing a perfect circle on an Etch-a-Sketch
(3) Cutting your 15-month old kid's hair and getting him to stay still.

So - guess what we did this evening?

Well, truth be told it was mostly K who did the work. My job was to distract Av with funny faces, holding his hands, and having him play peek-a-boo with his little blue puppy dog aptly named Guggenheim.

A little background on the hair thing: Both K and I have wavy to curly hair. And we've gone through our periods of long hair as well. So, of course, we procrastinated when it came to cutting Av's hair -- until we discovered that his bangs were running into his eyes. And since he hasn't quite perfected the dramatic "hair-flip," it meant cutting the bangs.

Which is precisely what K did. I'm fortunate to have married someone who works in a field where she has access to preservation envelopes which work quite well for hair samples. (Yeah, kind of like on CSI.) So we have a good amount of Avi-hair for the scrapbook. And we cut his bangs short enough for him to see, as well as some curls on each side that looked a bit like peyes or sidelocks worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys.

Which brings us to another Jewish thing: There is a Jewish tradition which is followed by Jews more traditional than we are which is called Upsheren. Basically, it is a tradition that boys do not get their hair cut until age three. Why? Because Jewish law dictates that if one grows a tree to produce fruit, s/he is forbidden from eating the fruit until year three. Supposedly this gives the plant enough time to mature. So, when the kid turns three, there's a big party thrown and assorted family members cut some of the kid's hair. At age three the kid starts to take on some minimal prayer responsibilities, such as certain blessings and the prayer said when you go to bed. But until then, you have a spazztic toddler-boy who looks like a small Howard Stern or Robert Plant.

The point of all of this being that people were starting to ask us if we're keeping his hair long to fulfil this custom. And now they won't have to, since he doesn't have wild hair in his face or on the sides of his head.

He does, however, have his hair long in the back. Partially mullet style. But it looks cute on him, since it's all curly. In fact, it reminds me of my hair when I was in high school and freshman year of college in the late 80s / early 90s. However, back then it wasn't called a mullet. It was simply... well, people just said that your hair was long in the back. Kind of like Don Johnson at the time. Or Billy Ray Cyrus. or the New Kids on the Block. At which point you'd hit whoever is comparing you to them.

I have to admit, though, that this makes Av look a little older, and less gender-ambiguous as many babies are. I'll post pictures eventually and let you all be the judge... K took some cute ones of the two of us in the kitchen.

Good night to all...