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October 20, 2003

¡Pelo Pelo Pelo!

This morning, it was my privilege to run hair-brushing ops on Giselle. Not generally much fun. She has uber s00per tender head. What she never seems to figure out is that the more she struggles, the more it hurts. But every time: brush appears--daughter runs. It's usually very dramatic. Brush appears from behind back. Giselle's eyes go wide, hands up in the air, mouth goes into big ''O" shape and long drawn out cartoon holler as she sprints past the slower, lumbering parents. At least that's the default script.

But I was ready for her. And I'm not as lumbering as she thinks. So I nabbed her, hopped to the couch, did a leg lock, used my left hand to hold her flailing arms, and started spraying the detangler with my right. Her response was a series of offended ptoo-ptooey sounds as she complains that I got it in her mouth and on her arms. Not much I can do, I explain, seeing as how she's whipping around like a beached trout. Then I start brushing from the bottom up--'sneaking up on the tangles' as they say. But what with all the thrashing, it's nigh impossible to be the perfect tangle surgeon. And the screaming begins. Obviously, a great deal of this is a game to her, so I explain yet again that the more docile she is, the less it will hurt and so we cycle between stillness, thrashing, screaming, explaining, stillness, etc. several times. Finally it was over and I set her free, like a rodeo gate unleashing the coiled stallion, BLAM! she was gone.

So I went to gather the rest of my things for our carefree stumble out the front door and off to school. But just then I heard a series of punctuated and quite indignant chimpanzee screeches that told me Harrison was now the object of some offense. So I grabbed a shoehorn to tuck my shirt in, and wandered back into the living room in time to witness Giselle using a scissors leg-lock to hold Harrison face down on the floor while coaxing his hair with her brush. "You NEED your HAIR brushed Harrison!" she tried to explain to him as he shrieked his grievances. She wasn't wailing on him, and was actually being rather deft with the brush, but he was having none of it. I had to vacate quickly to the kitchen to hide my muffled laughter, while Amanda worked to separate them. Their differences were reconciled and it was happiness again by the time we piled into the car, but I can see clearly that the proverbial crap-rolling-downhill process is already working quite actively in our household.

Neither of them thinks it's very funny when I kid about shaving them both bald :D

Posted by Jeremy at October 20, 2003 5:00 PM