"Shall we have a shampoo?"

That's what the lady at the Walmart hair center could have said, but instead it was more like, "Wanna shampoo?"

"Uhh...this is his very first real haircut, so I think no."

It was all very exciting. Who knew this child could sit in a chair while some stranger came at him with clippers and sharp scissors? I didn't. But he was cute. He was neither overly enthusiastic nor completely freaked out. Angie, the stylist, did a great job. She got down to business and the cut looks way better than anything I would have done. The promise of a "special treat" definitely played into his complacency during the whole ordeal. It was a balloon, which lasted through the shopping we did post-haircut, bumping me in the head a million times and blocking my view of oncoming cart traffic, but blew away once we got outside.

I was laughing on the outside during the haircut because he was being so cute tilting his head this way and that, but crying on the inside as I realized that my baby is growing up. It's just the thing that happens to all of them, I guess. As a parent, you want them to be able to do grown-up things like sit in the hair-cutting chair, but you still want them to give you hugs and kisses and hold you hand and cuddle. He'll still be little for a while longer. I can be happy about that.