The Failed Haircut, illustrated

I try to do the boy's haircutting at home, to save money. I figure I might as well practice it while Daniel was too young to care if I screw up.
I was spared haircuts for the first year and a half, because he was bald as a cue-ball for the first year and hardly had enough for a cut up until he was 20 months old or so:

The first haircut was rough. I took him to a pro so I could observe how it was done. Oh, how I loved those curls... but they were just too long. Sadly, they never grew back:(

I'll be the first to admit that his first few haircuts at home weren't great:


But they got better over time. The last haircut was the best yet- I actually didn't feel ashamed of it at all;)

We waited a bit long between haircuts though, and Daniel was looking pretty wild:


He was NOT happy once the process started. He kept asking "Why?" and I'd say "because your hair was getting wild" and he'd say "I WANT wild hair, I no like nice hair". Amidst continuing mutterings of "I tan't let you do this, mum", and one wiggle at a critical point, I accidentally hacked off half his bangs and some important sideburns. I tried evening it out, but this was the final product:

I tried to just let it be and let him go wash off and play a bit but.... he looked like a goober. There's no other word for it. Goober.
I called my sister Becky for the advice I knew I'd get: "buzz it". I love Daniel's curly hair and NEVER thought I would buzz it, but... it had to be done.
Knowing how wretched our first haircut of the day went, I found Daniel and told him I needed him to come back, this time for a totally new and different SUPERHERO haircut. He perked right up. I buzzed him first with a 5 but he looked shaggy, so we went down to a 3. He still squirmed but the anticipation of looking like a SUPERHERO did the trick. Finally:

(this was my first "buzz" experience- don't worry, I went back and evened it out afterwords)

Showing off his superhero awesomeness:

He looks... ok. His ears stick out. But he's convinced he looks like a superhero, so my plan worked there. We'll be avoiding buzzcuts in the future, but it's nice to know its an option.