The Cooke Family Website

A big day for my big girl!

Probably nearing 2 years ago, I made a deal with Madalyn.  If she stopped sucking her thumb, I would let her get a couple streaks of color put into her hair.  At the time, she wanted purple.  Off and on, she would try different methods to ‘earn’ her hair-do.

This summer, Maddie went away to camp for the first time.  About a week before she left for camp, I went to say goodnight and saw her put an X on her calendar.  I asked what the X’s were for and she told me that she put an X on every day she didn’t suck her thumb.  There were 2 straight weeks of X’s.  I started paying attention during the day and peeking in on her after she was asleep, and sure enough… no more thumb sucking!  She decided that making new friends at camp was SO important that she didn’t want to risk anyone making fun of her because she sucks her thumb.

About a week after she got home from camp, she reminded me about our deal.  I tried to talk her into coloring her hair pink, but she wanted to go blond!  We decided to wait until just before school started so it would still look good for her first day of junior high.

Today was the day.  We had 4 “peek-a-boo” blond highlights put in under the top layer of hair.  When she puts the sides up, you can see 4 definite streaks.  When the top layer is down, you can see a few lighter strands, but it just looks like she spent a lot of time in the sun this summer.  We thought about putting the highlights on the top layer, but then they would show roots when they start growing out.  This is a one time deal.  Mom isn’t paying to do this on a regular basis!

So… today, we headed to the local beauty school.

She was so excited.  It turned out exactly as I hoped.  Enough blond that the grown up girl is happy, but hidden enough that I don’t have to admit that she is old enough to have highlighted hair!