ElderSon is 31 (that's YEARS not months!), so he doesn't quite count as a toddler any more. And I don't have any digital pictures. But this thread, with all the cute pics, reminded me of a funny story.
ElderSon had long, blond curls when he was little. We lived on a sailboat in the Caribbean, and traveled to various remote islands off the Central American coast. At one island in particular, when he was maybe 2, we had a serious language barrier with the local folks, as Spanish was not the native language (they spoke a native language I never learned the name of). They had had little contact with outsiders at all, and certainly had rarely seen blond hair. I was talking with 5 or 6 of the local women, trying, laughingly, to convince them my son was a boy. With lots of charades, butchered Spanish and English. It was becoming clear that they simply did not believe me, although their (naked) toddlers had long hair as well, boys and girls. Finally, a grandmotherly type looked into his diaper to confirm. Okay, that was settled, he really was a boy. All the women were amazed, and called their friends over to come see. I took his diaper off (he certainly didn't mind), and all the village was amazed. Even the men were pointing and laughing. It was all very friendly, and certainly an icebreaker.
We stayed there a couple weeks, and despite the language barrier, eventually I discovered why they were so surprised at his gender. Seems they had really NEVER seen a blond person before. With one minor exception. There was a small stack of Playboy magazines some previous sailor had left. Some of the models, quite clearly female, had blond hair! They had simply assumed all blonds were women.
I usually kept his hair in a braid. When we finally cut it, at age 5 (his choice), I saved the braid. It was 17 inches long. I still have it. A cool feature is that it perfectly documents his hair color change from light blond, though all the gradual changes, to today's dark brown.
). DS is getting the hang of brushing it out of his eyes himself, too.
He will use water to dampen DS' hair and then put it back behind his ears, as that helps hold it (for a little while anyway).
I dread when he begins daycare in a couple months because of this- he may hear comments when I'm not there to defend him. How did you keep it out of his eyes until it got to this length? And how lont did it take to get that long?
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