Milo's first haircut

Milo was born a bit of a baldy. Well, actually, he was born with hair, then two weeks later most of it fell out, leaving just a Michael Bolton-esque fringe around his neck.

This was disturbing to his Colombian family - where is his hair? why doesn't it grow in? what is wrong with this boy? After all, your typical Colombian child bounces out of the womb, cushioned by a glorious afro of thick black hair.

No, Milo got my hair. Thin, light-colored, and nary a kink or a curl. We put off cutting his hair for such a long time, because it seemed sort of pointless to go to the trouble just to remove a few errant wisps from around his ears.

While we were in New Orleans, we thought it would be fun to go someplace nice and have it cut. So Jorge went to Aidan Gill, an upscale men's barber, to ask if they cut children's hair.

Yes, indeed, they do. In fact, they have a special 'first haircut' package for babies. Jorge asked how much it cost. And then stood there, dumbfounded for a few minutes, jaw literally dropping: $500 dollars. Yes, you read that right. 5 big'uns. Or maybe it was even more than that, I can't fully remember. The haircut comes with a framed print by a professional photographer. They had samples of the photos, some 30 of them, in the salon. Jorge couldn't speak for a while because he was too busy counting the pictures and trying to figure out what kind of sucker would spend that much for a picture of a child being groomed.

That was before Milo went to Colombia. By the time he got back, he was getting a bit of a mullet. I suspect Dora, my mother-in-law, was putting the same nasty herbal tonic on his head that she tried to get me to use after my hair fell out from chemo. Jorge did say that Milo smelled kind of funny. So we finally took him to get his hair cut on Saturday, at the same barber shop Jorge goes to. Milo was very well-behaved, I got some photos, and the whole thing set us back 300 Kwacha - about 2 dollars.

Before the haircut. Milo liked getting sprayed with water.

Although Milo was very good overall, he wanted to look around. The barber resorted to this vise grip to get him to hold still. I love Africa!

And here's the finished product! Isn't my boy handsome?