This morning at preschool drop-off, I was helping Milo to remove his jacket (while providing him the illusion he was doing it “all by self!”) and a teacher (let’s call her Jill) noticed we have the same color hair.
Jill said, “I guess that’s proof that you don’t color your hair.” I laughed a little and said I had heard that some moms will take their children to the salon and say, “make it that color” (pointing to the kid’s head) but no, I haven’t done that (yet!).
Yep, he's a redhead
Jill went on to say that another teacher in the infant toddler room had asked one child’s mom, “do you color Ethan’s hair? It’s so red!” and another (and this one’s my favorite), “do you give Jake those little blond highlights?” No and no.
As long as we’re on the topic of hair, Milo was so bald for so long that we didn’t know what color his hair would be until he was 18 months old. Granted, it still might change quite a bit, but for now we have a little redhead boy.
Milo was a very bald baby
Prancing around as a super pale redheaded child, I often cited that redheads were only 4% of the American population. More recently, I read that redheads are actually going extinct.
When I was little, I felt like an alien species at times. My hair would either be in style or out of style. It was never just hair. I was also mercilessly teased about my Caspar-like complexion. Even as an adult, strangers want to be photographed next to me to show of their suntans (this happens for real!) or the kind-hearted older ones will ask if I’m wearing sunscreen. Consequently, I always thought that fellow redheads were kind of icky. Being so pale and prone to sunburn was a terrible fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone I loved.
But now that I have a mini pale-face son with red curls and chubby (pale) cheeks, I wouldn’t wish for anything else. And some day, I might just color my hair to match his.
