Failure to Make the Braid

Annabelle dressed as Elsa for Halloween. If you have a daughter, there is nothing surprising or interesting about that sentence. (She's adorable, though, isn't she? I mean, look at that smile. That pose! What a cutie!)

Because she was Elsa, Annabelle needed something, something I, as her father, am totally unequipped to provide to her. I could handle the dress, the Frozen-themed trick-or-treating pail, and the shoes. But the braid, well, that's not my area. And not just any braid--an Elsa braid.

Look at this thing:

How would I ever be able to do that? It's insane. 

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Let's stick with a basic, run-of-the-mill braid. That should be easy enough, right? Wrong. It's impossible. Impossible? You're being dramatic. I am not being dramatic. I cannot do it. Period.

Being able to do Annabelle's hair (and some day Aurora's, if she gets any) is important to me. Like any father of daughters, I see the commercials and the all-star dads doing all sorts of elaborate things (like using a vacuum) that put the rest of us to shame. I picture myself in that Dad's shoes, coolly crafting the perfect 'do.

But then I try. And it goes horribly wrong. More on that in a second. 

Ponytails were challenging, but doable. Here's a picture of my first one. (The mustache binky is a bonus.) I figured out that technique because it's really just brushing hair and wrapping an elastic. If you've wrapped up a bag of chips, you can do a pony tail. 

And so I thought the transition to braids would be possible, even easy. I asked Bridget to show me how to do one. Her ninja-liked hands moved no fewer than 70 MPH, I blacked out, and Annabelle had a braid. Not good. So I asked her to show me again, slowly. And she did. Three strands of hair, over, under ... then I lost it again. 

I figured she was just making it look too complicated, that if I got my hands on the hair, it'd be easy. (You know how women complicate things, right? Right?!) Anyway, that wasn't the case. I somehow managed to get the small strand of hair in my ring finger (an accomplishment, I thought!), but it was all downhill from there. I was all thumbs and quickly called an audible: "How about a nice pony tail, Annabelle?"

I stood and watched on Halloween night as Bridget did her (winter) magic. (The braid was quite good, but we never snapped a photo of it.) And now here I am. One or two mornings each week, Annabelle will request a braid and I have to tell her that I can't do it, that we'll have to wait for Mom, who, by the way, has almost 30 years of braid-making experience.

On a unrelated note, headbands are awesome, aren't they? Maybe Disney should go with a headband for their next princess. Until then, I am a man defeated. Stupid Disney.