More hair drama

Due to a variety of reasons that I won't detail (because I'm sure it would bore you), I decided to go back to my natural hair color, medium brown. See pic.

I went to a salon because I knew going from light blonde to med brown would be tricky, and I wanted to leave it to the pros. I don't mind paying good money for good work. They told me it was necessary to put on an orange tinted filler before doing the actual color. I didn't get a pic, but after the filler it looked crazy dark orange/red. After washing and drying they applied the color. One for my roots and another for the rest. (How they keep that separate, I don't know.) What resulted was a SUPER dark brown (just about black) color with very noticeable red tones. The stylist working on me tried to tell me she didn't notice much red but another girl came over for a 2nd opinion and said she definitely could and suggested they put wash a toner in that would take so e of the red out. They did that and it helped, but I left with shockingly dark hair. They acknowledged that this was not the color we were going for (they had the above pic to refer to), but said everyone's hair reacts differently to color. They said it would fade over the next few weeks and to return in four weeks for another color. I made another appt., not really sure if I was going to keep it.

I went home and immediately started researching how to reverse dark color. I ended up using Color Oops, a product that is supposed to take out permanent color and return your hair to its natural shade. In my case, I knew that wouldn't happen because my hair was stripped of its natural shade when I went blonde. But I thought it would take it to some shade lighter than what I had. And it did just that. It changed to a very brassy light brown. Then I used a protein filler from the beauty supply store. (Necessary according to the directions of Color Oops). Finally, I recolored it with John Frieda color foam in light natural brown. I only left it on for five minutes and it got way darker than the box picture, but still an improvement from the near black I had before. I'm happy for now. I'm tired of messing with it. Hopefully my roots will grow, and grow, and grow FAST.  :) I can't imagine messing with color for a long time! That was a mess. It makes me wonder, do other people have these same issues with salon color, or is it just me? I also had problems going to blonde, as I posted about before. So frustrating!

The final pic here doesn't look that much lighter than the near black pics, but trust me, it is!

Vacation

Two months to go until summer vacation!  Yikes. I need to lose 5-7lbs before then.  That's not a lot I guess.  I can do it.  I also have two weddings to attend in June and July.  As of this post, I am enforcing some rules for myself.  (I am very much a rule person. I like structure. It works for me.)

- Gym at least 3-4 times a week

- Lots of water (I like to add Starbucks Cool Refreshers in lime or a splash of juice to give it a hint of flavor. It drink much more that way.)

- No dessert (Which is hard because my family pretty much considers dessert a staple, so I get to watch them eat it every night. Joy.)

- No alchohol (I occasionally enjoy a glass of moscato after dinner.)

- No snacking

- No soda at restaurants (I rarely do this anyway.)

- No bread at dinner.

- Sub white pasta for brown at dinner.

Doing these things should help a bit but I may need to get more drastic (17 day diet) come June. We'll see!

Bahamas, here we come!

Closet confusion

Lately I'm really frustrated with my closet.  I probably only wear about 10% of all my clothes.  Some of that has to do with the fact that a large majority of my wardrobe is professional/career wear and I don't work!  So I just keep that stuff hoping I'll get to wear it again one day.  But then there are other things- skirts, dresses, tops, that I haven't worn in forever but have a hard time getting rid of.  Anyone else with me on this?

Here is the cycle.  I'll go to my closet and look for something to wear and not see anything I like, so I'll decide to go through the entire thing and weed out old stuff to get rid of it.  So I start to pull things out, and when I look at it, I think it's pretty or nice and remember when I used to wear it, and think, oh I should wear this again. So it gets put right back in the closet, and I. Never. Wear. It.  But it's so hard to get rid of things that I "used to" love! My former memories of the items is confusing my current judgement of them. Ugh. Help!

Ps- I saw Lawrence Zarian (stylist) say on TV this morning that jean jackets were back in.  That is one trend I will NOT support.  Ewwwww!

Paci Update

Soooo the paci experiment failed.  We made it almost a week, but during that time there was major lack of sleep on B's part (mostly naps) and major, major crying.  It was awful.  I decided it was not worth all that and bought him new paci's, which he was very happy about.  And I don't regret it.  (yet)  Like my dad said, he won't be graduating from high school with a paci. So I'm not going to worry about it.  He only uses it for sleeping anyway.  He is back to taking loooooong naps, which he clearly still needs at this age.  Yesterday he slept for 3.5 hours and I had to wake him up!  Hopefully at some point B will phase it out on his own.

"Bye bye Paci, Paci bye bye!" (Elmo song)

Yesterday totally sucked, for a variety of reasons- not the least of which was Blake acting like a whiny goober that he normally is NOT.

Last week I decided to get rid of the paci for good.  At 2.5 yrs old, I think he's getting a bit old for it. All week I was telling him he only had a few more days with it.  Then Friday after his nap I told him we were going to cut it up and throw it away.  I didn't know if he'd freak out or go along with it, but he went along with it. He loves cutting things and I never let him near scissors, so he saw it as an opportunity to have some fun! haha  He cut up the paci happily and we threw it away and said goodbye to it.  And that was that.

I figured we'd have a battle on our hands Friday night but nope, nothing. He laid in this crib and said goodnight to me and went to sleep. No fussing, no crying.  I thought, woo hoo!  But little did I know how difficult Saturday would be.  He fought his afternoon nap with gusto.  He cried, and cried, and cried. For a LONG time. I eventually got him up. Then I went to Walmart to shop for the week and came home to see him nodding off while eating a cracker and looking at my ipad. It was all he could do to stay awake. So I took him upstairs again, sure that he would crash. Nope! He cried, and cried, and cried. I even tried letting him watch my ipad in his crib but he refused.  He was just so mad that I was making him be there again. So I ended up getting him up again, so he didn't get a nap yesterday.  I put him to bed an hour earlier last night, which he was not very happy about, but he was so tired he only cried for a couple minutes then crashed. FINALLY

So today, I'm going to take him to the park before lunch to wear him out.  Hopefully (please God) he goes down for a nap today. I'm still expecting some crying, but hopefully not as much.  He better get used to going down for a nap sans paci because I. Am. Not. getting rid of his nap. He still desperately needs it.

Off to park we go.

WTF

Here are some "wtf" worthy things that have happened since my last blog post. (Replace the f with a non cuss word, thanks.)

- my son left the bleach bottle laying on its side in the cabinet in the laundry room, soaking the mesh bra bag next to it. when I pulled out said bag, bleach sprayed on my clothes, ruining them. the jeans were my fave and the shirt was new and I was wearing it for the first time that day!

- an acquaintance of my daughters from school committed suicide a few days ago (8th grader)

- I noticed today our (expensive) duvet cover has a black marker mark on it. I was gone over the weekend, so I'm confused.

- the bombings in Boston, obviously

But with all that said, lately I've been feeling super blessed to have such a healthy, smart, well behaved boy. It seems like almost every other child I know B's age has health problems and/or severe allergies. I am so thankful B doesn't have any of that stuff. He rarely even gets a runny nose. We hit the baby jackpot! But I'm also suspicious that a lot of allergy/asthma stuff kids deal with is related to all the vaccines that get pumped into their tiny bodies. :/ But that's another post altogether.

Anyway, that's what's on my mind this week.

Ps- we're taking the paci away tomorrow night. should be interesting weekend.

Happy

Last night during our singing/rocking time before bed:

Mr. B: "I so happy."
Me: "Aww, I'm glad your happy."
Mr. B: "Thank you, mommy."

Then my heart melted to the floor. He is too much!

Here are some cute pics of the happy boy taken by his sister yesterday. She must have been bribing him, because he never poses like this for me.