A Halloween Story: Putting That Hair to Good Use

You may remember the "awesome" haircut that Barry forced upon my child about a month ago. When deciding on Canon's Halloween costume, this was the main focus of our inspiration. The idea was to go with Biker. My friend, Brandy, had a motorcycle that he could wear. All we had to do was come up with the clothing portion of the costume. I thought we had it pretty nailed down until we actually dressed him up. He looked more like trailer trash than a biker.
First, the hair . . .

Now the clothes . . .

He's wearing jeans and a white t-shirt that I cut the sleeves from. I made an "I love Mom" tattoo on his arm with black lipstick. There is barbed wire on the other side.

And now the full costume . . .

He looks pretty tough next to our Strawberry Princess, Ava. He hated wearing the motorcycle. It was pretty heavy, so we just set him down inside of it on the ground. He cried a good bit at first, but one he found the candy, he was good to go. Canon really doesn't like candy. He'll eat suckers, but that's about it. On this night, he would grab candy from one of our dozens of bowls and baskets (we had lots of friends come to hang out, and everyone brought tons of candy) then bite into it through the wrapper. After giving a look of disgust, he would toss the candy back in the bowl. We tried to be good about getting those pieces out, but there is no telling what some poor children took away with them.

Aplin Farms

As a follow-up to our infamous "Candy Shot" last Halloween, the girls and I were eager to find another fantastic photo op to celebrate the Fall season and, if necessary, Halloween. We emailed for weeks about possible ideas, and finally someone (I think it was Mary) came up with the idea of Aplin Farms (frequently called Alpin during our online conversations). Aplin Farms is a farm/pumpkin patch about 10 miles west of Dothan. Though several members of our usual group couldn't make it, we managed to make pretty good use of our free Saturday morning.

We arrived at Aplin Farms around 10:00 a.m. and made plans to do just about everything. After checking out the boxes of produce at the front of the farm . . .

. . . we began studying the various activities we could do. The farm offered a train ride, hay ride, corn maze, sunflower picking, petting zoo, jumparoo . . . basically anything that would get you either looking or smelling dirty. Thankfully, the people running the farm knew better than we did. Instead of paying for everything up front, we got a little yellow ticket. As we went to each activity, we had the person in charge stamp our ticket. When we had done everything we wanted to do, we simply returned the card to the cashier and paid for those activities in which we participated. Remember how I said we were going to do everything? By the end of the morning, our ticket had only 1 stamp!

The Train Ride. And it was completely worth it.

Canon absolutely loved it. He spent most of the ride just like this, looking out the "window."

After that, we just kind of wandered around the farm. We did visit the Petting Zoo, but thankfully Canon was as interested in that as I was, so we left fairly quickly. I think the animals made him a little nervous. They made me a little nauseas.

Canon found a pig made out of a hay bale, and they quickly became friends. We ignored the sign saying "Please do not touch or ride pigs." I don't think they really meant to put those there. How can you expect a one year-old not to touch a big pink hay bale? Surely they meant for us not to touch or ride the live pigs that were wandering around the farm somewhere but that we never saw.

As you can imagine, it was then time for a snack. This is one of my favorite pictures of Canon and me together.

Before leaving, we had to take advantage of some photo opps. I managed to get one of Canon and Ava before the Yates' family headed home.

She's already playing hard-to-get.

And here's the rest of the Farm Crew: Colt, Julia, Alex, and Canon. Not bad for three one-year-olds and a big brother!

Park Fun

One of Canon's favorite things to do is to play at the park. One of Barry and my favorite things to do is visit our friends in Birmingham. Who says you can't do both?! Laura and JD live just a couple of blocks from a public park, so Laura, Canon, and I took advantage of a chance to get outside while the boys watched back-to-back football all day.

Of course, Canon fell OFTEN! Once, after a particularly rough face-to-woodchips contact, Canon stood up to dust himself off. Something to mention here is that Canon has had a runny nose for weeks now. Something else to note is that runny noses cause stickiness on the whole upper lip. So you can imagine that when Canon jumped up after face-planting into the dirt, some of that dirt stuck to the sticky goo on his upper lip. Laura and I couldn't control our laughing long enough to grab the camera and take a picture of Little Hitler.

Canon especially loved sliding with Laura, who is currently a mother-in-training. Her son is due on Canon's second birthday!

He let me slide with him a couple of times. After looking at this picture, I can see why he didn't want me to go with him too much. Do you think I dislocated his shoulders or broke his hip bones first?

And, of course, Mr. Independent loved to slide by himself.

Even I Can Call Myself a Martyr for This One

Earlier in the week, Barry said that he really wanted to take Canon to get his haircut. He had been talking for weeks about the fact that he wanted to let Canon's hair keep growing so that he would eventually have a Mullet. So you can imagine my excitement when he mentioned wanting to cut it!
Not to be outsmarted, however, I told Barry that since he was taking Canon to get the haircut (meaning that he got to decide how it was going to be cut) that I should get something out of it as well. I began scheming so as not be outdone by one of Barry's crazy ideas. Barry responded with a very non-chalant answer - I can't remember what his exact words were, but they led me to believe that my mature husband would return my still-a-baby son to me with a somewhat regular haircut. Some women never learn! I forgot who I was married to.
When I left work on the Big Day, I called Barry to see where he was. He was on his way back to the hospital with Canon, and he said that I should meet them there. When I arrived, this is what I found:

I am proud of myself for not screaming, crying, or even losing my temper. In truth, I really didn't say too much, except that I hated it (in a very calm tone) and that I couldn't believe he buzzed my toddler's hair (again, no aggression shown). And yes, I said "he buzzed" as in "Barry buzzed." After taking Canon to a legitimate hair salon (nicer than the one I use) and witnessing his uncontrollable screaming and uncooperativeness in the chair, Barry decided to have the stylist explain to him how to cut a child's hair into a Mohawk. He then took Canon home, stripped off his clothes, tuned his IPhone to an episode of Dora the Explorer on Netflix, and proceeded to use clippers to cut Canon's hair.
That night, I made Barry buzz the rest of the back off and tried to get him to let me trim the top just a little. After two snips, he told me to put the scissors down and leave it alone. He liked it just like that. I still can't believe I actually put them down. At least now we know what he's going to be for Halloween . . . something involving a spiked Mohawk.
Since then, Barry has come up with other rather ridiculous haircut ideas, especially for a one-year-old. I am still dealing with the notion that this is one of those battles that I am probably going to end up choosing not to fight. Instead, I will just have to live with the consequences of the decisions of an adult bald man living vicariously through a lustrously-haired young boy.