Lily's Hair...

There are many things I never imagined myself having to do as a father...there always seemed to be those things that mommy would always be in charge of doing.  Over the years however, I have found that one by one, those things have slowly been coming off my list as I have been "required" or strangely enough, challenged myself, to do.  The most recent example that comes to mind is styling my daughter Lily's hair.  Now, I use the word styling very, very loosely here.  What I am really referring to is either putting her hair in a pony tail or into a braid.

Over the years, it has slowly but surely become my responsibility to bathe all of our kids.  While I do love the one on one time with my kids that this has provided me, it was also out of necessity as due to my children all being relatively close in age, there was always a pregnant belly that would make it difficult or nearly impossible for Tiffany to lean over the side of a bath tub to bathe our children.  So, long story short, I bathe the children.  Now, my daughter Lily, who just turned 5 this summer, has very long hair.  I mean really long hair.  Her classmate this year referred to her as the girl with the hair like Rapunzel in the movie Tangled. Except for her bangs, we have never had her hair cut in all 5 years that she has been on this earth.  She has beautiful long hair.  However, following her bath, all that wet, often times snarled hair needs to be combed and either put in a pony tail or braided to prevent her hair looking like a rats nest the next morning.  Combing or brushing I can do...although she might argue that Daddy does not go "easy" like mommy does.  But a pony tail, that took me a long time to master.  Usually I would send Lily downstairs to see my wife to have her do her hair.  But inevitably, for example, when Tiffany was in the hospital following the birth of our daughter Gabby, the job of the pony tail fell to my inexperienced, nervous, trembling hands.  Long story short, after many failed attempts and a few acceptable efforts, I figured out how to put Lily's hair into a pony tail.  I made it through, Lily's hair survived (albeit there were times where I am positive that people thought I was severely intoxicated when I did her hair) and the teachers at her school all very kindly would send Lily home with her hair looking far better than it did when I dropped her off at school.

Most recently however, after watching Tiffany braid Lily's hair the day before (for probably the millionth time cumulatively), I decided, following her bath, to take a stab at braiding her hair.  I am still not sure why I determined it was something I should try at that very moment.  I think I just convinced myself that I needed to see if I could do it.  If there was success (which I highly doubted would happen on the first go around), I could send Lily downstairs to her mommy with pride, following her with my head held high, beating my chest, awaiting the accolades that would no doubt follow.  Conversely, if it was a miserable failure, no one needed to know about it, and I could buy Lily's silence with some extra dessert, or maybe a little extra T.V. time.

However, much to my surprise, my first attempt was borderline flawless.  The braid actually came out pretty darn well.  I was a braiding master, I was able to slay the hair braiding dragon with precision.  And while the accolades were not quite as elaborate as I pictured in my head, I think I did earn a few points from my wife that day...

What do you think?  How did I do?