Hair Fairy

My children do things that disturb me. I have worked hard to have them embrace their weirdness. To bolster their self-image and give them a sense that they are free to be who they want to be. I dare say the scheme has worked. They could give two shits what anyone thinks. They laugh at things they find funny and they use the word “fart” freely in public. I’ve instructed them in the fine art of shutdown of a bully through a sharp wit. I’ve heard them tell a boy that they didn’t care what he thought and they are way weirder than he could imagine so back it off. When we get a notice from school that the kids can ignore uniform rules on a Friday, Jane will pack a Lord of the Rings style cloak into her backpack and wear it all day. I caught her wearing a fox tail into school one morning and she was too far away for me to stop her. They have personal confidence. I can probably put this ship on autopilot for a while. I might even need to shame them a little for balance.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Supermom found her old Barbie’s in boxes in the attic. We brought a couple of the boxes home and the girls have been playing with them non-stop. The only problem is how they are playing with the Barbie’s. They think old style Barbie with non-existent underwear is the funniest thing ever. I have found half-naked Barbie in terrible poses all around the house. The kids hide her and then wait for me to find her topless torso in the kitchen utensil drawer while they look on from the other room. I act surprised and they die laughing only to run off and hide another Barbie somewhere else in the house.

Last night the game escalated.

Supermom called out from the bathroom, “You have to come see this.”

I walked into the bathroom and found this on the sink.

I assume that Barbie crossed Skipper one too many times. Maybe the right-sized Barbie got jealous of the long legs and skinny arms from vintage Barbie. Either way, the kids thought this was really funny too.

What other disturbing things have they been up to? Hmmm. Oh wait I know. They insist on sleeping together every single night. All four of them in a make-shift king bed (two twins pushed together). I laugh a little at the thought of some people who probably had to share a bed thinking about how nice it would be to have their own space while my wolf cubs insist on sleeping like sardines. That isn’t the weird part. In fact, I find their strong urge to co-sleep kind of endearing; as long as they stay out of my bed.

The weird part was two nights ago.

I heard a strange series of thumps and, being a competent parent, I went to investigate. I found Donna Threeto curl up inside a large plastic container that she had placed in her quadrant of the community king bed. I dumped her out of the box and took it away. She was angry. She insisted that she wanted to sleep in a box. Twice she snuck out of the room to get the box and put it back in her bed. I locked it away in the closet. What in the world? Who tries to sleep in a box? The other girls acted like it was the most normal thing ever. This is coming from the same kid who has pondered the tooth fairy and instead of questioning her existence decide to call our bluff by cutting her hair and placing it in a ziplock bag under her pillow. I asked her, “Why did you do this to your hair?”. She replied, “I’m getting a dollar from the hair fairy.” She then stared at me to gauge my response to the idea of a fictional character. Well played Donna.

I didn’t dare leave a dollar for hair. We would all wake up bald when she realized what a goldmine was all around her. Not my head so-much but her sisters.

Also worthy of note. Supermom has embraced the small dog and bought him a sweater. Meet GQ Jasper.

And Jane is working on a Science Fair project that is centered around swabbing animal spit and watching the bacteria grow. We want to see which animal has the most aggressive mix. Our test subjects are Cat, Dog, Squirrel, Rabbit, Gecko, Horse, Goat, Chicken, Human, and a blank Control sample. Leave a comment to guess which animal was the worst. I’ll share the answer in my next post. The horse is shown as the cover photo to give an idea of what it looks like when animal spit is cultured in a dish.

This should be one of my kids. I would be so proud.

Life rolls on here at the Underdaddy house. If you enjoy quirky everyday stories, this post was for you. You’re welcome.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

Reality is truly stranger than fiction. My only hope is that I document all this craziness and get to turn it into a five season family comedy sitcom where I am played by an actor who is really close to my likeness, like Taylor Lautner.

He has a little more hair but other than that… pretty much identical.

Today would be an excellent episode. Here is the rundown…

It is universal bath night. Everyone in the house except the squirrel will be bathed tonight. We have a system for the girls now that they can all shower. It works because I stand near the bathroom and shout like a drill sergeant telling the children when to switch. If they are left to their own discretion then the hot water will last for about one child. They think of showering of more like talking in a warm rainstorm and less like a deliberate effort to get clean. I constantly think, “Oh my God what are you doing there are only two steps in this puzzle. 1) Wash Hair. 2) Wash Body. Then get out and move on with your life!”

A common theme is for the child who is waiting to get in the bath to suddenly decide that they have to pee right this second; or on super lucky occasions, that they have to poop. This was a pee day. One of my children, who will remain anonymous, jumped on the toilet to pee while I was helping the youngest child out of the shower. I suddenly felt a spattering on my leg. I looked over to see my child trying, as hard as she could, to pee really fast. This voluntary spike in pressure caused a change in the angle of the stream and somehow she peed down my entire leg and on two of the towels in the floor while sitting squarely on the seat. I doubt that Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson could explain the physics for this anomaly on a whiteboard. Maybe the scientists of CERN will discover a discrete urinary tractive force hidden inside the Higgs Boson. Who knows?

Much like someone who has seen aliens or Bigfoot, I know I saw pee move in a sine wave pattern and soak my leg. True story.

For those of you who wonder if the infamous Don Threeto still has her cold calculated magic, I present the following story.

A few nights ago Supermom was drying hair after a different universal bath night. Don Threeto had just finished having her hair dried and to promote good hair health, Supermom trimmed off some split ends.

DT: Mommy! Mommy! Can I have that hair? (pointing at the floor)

SM: Um, sure.

DT: Im going to put it in a bag for the hair fairy.

SM: Oh, Is that like the Tooth Fairy?

DT: Yes but for hair.

SM: Makes sense.

So Don Threeto takes her hair trimmings and disappears into the kitchen. She reemerges a few minutes later with a ziplock full of split ends. Bath time became bedtime and the hair was placed under her pillow. I would like to make a note here that all four of the children were extremely tired from a weekend of running and playing outside. They all fell deep asleep in about twenty minutes which is record time. Supermom and I stayed up a little while but we were tired too and soon went to bed. At around 7:00 I woke up after my third snooze alert and I immediately went to wake the children up. I found them all in a deep sleep and hesitant to get out of bed. No one seemed to have moved throughout the night.

At this point I had forgotten about the Hair Fairy care package. Then I heard Don Threeto call out, “IT WORKED!”

I’ll be damned if she didn’t walk into my room holding a fistful of change. While I can’t imagine why a magical fairy would break-and-enter for hygienic trimming and why this same creature would leave forty nine cents of change, I couldn’t figure any scenario to explain how the money got under the pillow. Her surprise looked genuine and the rest of the gang aren’t that good at lying. The older two would have wanted credit immediately. The youngest would have probably eaten the hair trimmings and flushed the money down the toilet.

Deep down I know that Don Threeto is an unflappable gangster. I’m sure the Hair Fairy ruse was a creative cover to siphon money out of a sister’s piggy bank. Another brilliant scheme by the future leader of the free world. I’m kind of proud at her thought process. Strategic as hell.

If you have the challenge of a deep thinking mastermind, this post is for you. You’re welcome.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.