Hair today, gone tomorrow

One of the big debates before Thomas was born (aside from whether he would be a boy or a girl) was if he would have any hair at birth. Hair is a precious commodity in my family. Most of us are born bald and it takes us a good three or four years to grow anything of substance atop our heads:

This is me at about age three (I'm the cute one on the far left). My lack of hair at this age makes my gender a little ambiguous. If I wasn't wearing that dress, I could easily pass for a dude. (I'm not even going to make excuses for my sisters. They are just innocent victims of being adolescents in the '80s).


If you are male in my family, you have about fifteen years to enjoy your hair before it will probably start falling out. Kenta, on the other hand, had more hair at birth than my dad did in high school:


He also claims that his uncles were the hairiest Japanese people he ever met. Despite his hairy Japanese heritage, I'm afraid that the inferior Scandanavian hair genes that Thomas inherited from me will determine his future hair growth. According to Wikipedia, the maternal line plays an important factor in the inheritance of male pattern baldness. Since I am Thomas's mother, I would say that his hairy days are numbered. Sorry, Thomas. The odds are pretty much stacked against you, son. Let's examine the evidence:

Grandpa Michaelsen (my dad) and Great-Grandpa Michaelsen (my grandpa)

I don't have the pictures to prove it, but I'm pretty sure both my great-grandpa and great-great grandpa were also bald. Baldness is a tradition that runs deep in our Danish roots. And now, Thomas, I pass these genes on to you. And from the looks of it, they are already beginning to manifest themselves. That nice head of dark fuzz that he was born with has been dimished to a stripe along the back of his head - pretty similar to the stripe of hair that my dad has. It's a look that is perfectly acceptable for a grown man, but on a baby, it just looks like some heinous hybrid of the Skullet and the Child Neglect:

I would cut it, but there's so little that I don't really know if it would make a difference. I would pretty much have to shave his head if I wanted to even things out anyway.

I've got issues myself when it comes to getting haircuts. I finally cut my hair last week for the first time in almost fifteen months. Going to get my hair cut just stresses me out, though I've only had one really bad haircut in my entire life. I had been out on my mission for almost a year and I decided it was time to get my ONE haircut that I was going to have for those eighteen months. It was right before my birthday. Every street corner it seemed had a peluqueria (barber shop) so my companion and I chose one near our home owned by hairdresser named Miguel Angel. Let's just say this guy was a lot more "Angela" than "Miguel". Anyway, he snipped off my sun-fried, dust-coated, stress-thinned hair and - voila! - I ended up with some horrible version of a Peruvian mullet. It was awful. When we got home, I had my companion take our dull little pair of scissors to try and even things out and minimize the visible damage. I didn't wear my hair completely down for the next seven months. Like they always say: "It'll grow back". Eventually, it did. But that doesn't keep me from stressing out about it. What if they cut too much off? What if I don't like it? What if it's just never the same again? I don't want to do something to Thomas's head that I would later regret. The more I look around, I realize that lots of babies are sporting bald spots on the back of their heads. So, I can justify my son sporting a skullet. Why not? Everyone else his age is doing it.

In other non-hair related Thomas news.....

.....tummy time was a success this week!

Well, sort of.