Tag Archives: dye

The Red Bribe

covet cartoon girl with red hair_full

Some of you already know this (because God knows I complain about it enough), but my daughter recently turned four, and she absolutely refuses to use the toilet. This is far beyond a potty training issue, as she knows *how* to use the toilet, but will not. I have tried everything you can image, and have consulted all those around me. My pediatrician is out of ideas. My day care provider who has been in the business for nearly 2o years has never seen such a stubborn child. My friends and family have attempted helping as best they could. Ally is a resilient little thing.

My most recent efforts involved placing her on the toilet and not allowing her to leave until she has accomplished something, repeated over several days. Each time she will hold it all in until after the trial is over, up to five or six hours, and sometimes the entire day. This is obviously not healthy. She is fighting me on it to the point where I am actually worried about harming her if we keep this up, so of course I relent.

I have tried talking, ordering, threatening, bribing, but none of these methods work. We talk, and she promises she will try, but never does. I have ordered and she has done nothing. I threatened, but how am I supposed to follow through? I have bribed, but there is nothing she wants enough to give in for. Until now.

For almost a year she has been practically obsessed with my red hair. She has collected every red haired doll she could find (and Disney has done a great job recently with providing her with such things). She constantly asks about it, and has shown disappointment at not having any of her own. I have shown her pictures of younger me with blond hair just like hers, but her four year old mind cannot understand that my red hair is produced from a bottle. She wants to be like her mother which of course is very endearing to me. However, the older she gets, the more obsessive she has become about it. I have several times assured her that once she grows up, should she still want it, she can have it.

The other day she said that she wants to shave her head because she does not have red hair. My first reaction was to the extreme nature of her statement. I told Tanya about it who then related it to her husband, and he had an amazing idea. This is the one thing she has been asking about that is not fleeting (as in some of her interests that have lasted all of two days). This is something that she *really* wants.

Well, as it happens, there is something I really want. Hrm….

I immediately started researching different types of hair dye since the ones I use are pretty harsh. I found some organic henna ones that would work pretty well and have less chemicals than most commercial dyes. This is not to say they are totally not harmful, but considering I was only a few years older than Ally when my mother started dying my hair, I am sure she will be fine. And let’s just say my mom wasn’t too concerned with safety – little me got to experience peroxide at its best. However this does not mean I want to do that to her, so I found some that won’t damage her hair almost at all, will wash and fade over time, and won’t burn her skin. I am not saying this will be a regular thing, because it won’t. And she most certainly will not be dying her hair every three to four weeks like me. More like once a year at most. But, as I have now told her, if she uses the toilet regularly for an entire month, she gets to have red hair.

If this doesn’t work… I give up.

The Egg Hunt

eggs

Easter is coming, and I am totally unprepared. I am referring to the entire egg dying business. As has been the case with every holiday recently, we are doing two Easters this year because some people, who shall remain nameless, can’t get over some grudges, even when there are children involved. As much as I love the Easter Bunny, and enjoy him greatly in his chocolate form, it is really the children who get the most out of this. But apparently I don’t know how to be a mother, so what do I know? Maybe it is not about the children after all. If I sound at all angry, it is only because I am.

Two Easter celebrations means twice the pastel eggs that I will have to magically produce come Saturday morning. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can lay them myself… already colored! No? Well in that case, I better figure out how to do this.

There has been a lot happening that I can’t blog about, but all that aside, I believe I have about five minutes to myself at some point between 1 and 2:30 on Friday afternoon. The other day while contemplating my dilemma I thought that it would be wonderful if I could buy already dyed eggs, but then realized I don’t know where to get such things. I vaguely remember once seeing cartons of them somewhere while thinking “who buys these?” Obviously I do. Yet there is still the problem of not knowing from where, and going from place to place to find out if they carry them is out of the question. At that rate I might as well just do them myself. A bunch of eggs, one giant bowl, one dye tablet, and done! To save time I could dye them all pink. Ally would be thrilled, and Ducky wouldn’t care.

In the meantime I have been poking around to figure out where pre-made Easter eggs can be found. Who said egg hunts were just for children?