Corona Hair, Unkledunkle Cares

Kids' haircuts have always been an issue. Organizing Crosby's first haircut was mostly an ordeal because most barbers in Portland wouldn't cut a kid under three years old. The barbers that would, charged the same price as an adult cut. After ten phone calls to find something more reasonable, I paid full price at Modern Man about a mile/1.5 Km from our house. Crosby ended up going from this:

Sweet little baby to

Ready for Boot Camp

One of the perks of moving to Berlin, is that hair cuts for men are already pretty cheap, and about 8 Euros / $10 for kids. Paul's cuts have been pretty good but the little boys have had mostly bad results. There have been lots of bad ones for Crosby, but Hugo took the cake on this one: 

Apparently in Turkey, boys under one years old all get buzz cuts. This barber did his first cut right down the middle, so there was no turning back once he started. When I told him Hugo was over two, he was like "oh". Turkish cuts has since changed the name, but we haven't been back. 

Since Corona, the barber shops were closed, open over the summer, and now open if you have a negative corona test within the last 24 hours. The combination of Paul using this as an opportunity to grow out his hair, the hassle of first getting a corona test, and me reading parenting books that talk about building the "bank of good will" by not fretting about hair and clothes - the boys were getting shaggy. However, this photo of the kids eating two pounds of blueberries in one sitting broke the camel's shaggy back...for Uncle Connor.

I mean yes, scraggly, but also happy. Are they related?

Connor's text was about the closest thing to an intervention that you can have half-way across the world. Because the kids lack motivation, I told them that Uncle Connor would pay them each 5 Euros / $7 USD to get their hair cut. I also scheduled an appointment at my trendy Japanese salon to see if haircut quality would improve if we weren't literally under the U-bahn stop by our house.

We did a lot of talking about getting our haircut because I wasn't sure that Hugo would actually get in the chair. Our neighbor Val taught him some important lessons about negotiating, thus a post haircut bubble tea trip got thrown into the deal. In an interesting turn of events, Crosby was the one who put up the biggest fight. It was at this stage of the cut that he threw off his gown and said "I hate my hair. This is stupid."

To be fair, his hair looks even worse than when we started. After a total of 45 minutes, he ended up looking like this:

Paul confirmed that the cut is in fact much better quality. However, Crosby is none too happy with short hair, and we promised we'd never cut it this short again. 

I brought along some cough drops to bribe/keep Hugo happy during his cut (pro-tip: lolly pop + gown + hair = not good)

He spent his 30 minutes in the chair saying his mantra of "haircuts are dumb, my hair looks dumb" while Carmen did this:

This being: put her grubby hands on everything.

Ok, also she was adorable and managed not to break anything.

From my perspective, the haircut was a smashing success. What can you get the man who has everything for his 40th birthday? "Civilized" looking nephews.  Happy Birthday Uncle Connor! We miss you.