Loc Out!

So, we finished the take down on Sunday.
It was a JOB!
{I've been quiet on blog....been working on hair!}

It took over forty hours of work, thankfully I had great helpers in Emmy and Marti.

But it was exhausting for us all.  On Friday I had to send her to her first day of 5th grade in the midst of the process - can you say "Bad planning?" I can! But I think we did ok on making it still work for the day.

These locs had been put in and maintained by several different people over the  years. Thus we had palm rolled, microbraided, and latched locs...sometimes all three in one loc.  Plus of course the standard "locking" of hair growing together and dead hair etc.

We went through bottles of conditioner and olive oil, with a little bit of detangler thrown in during the takedown.  And still it was SO dry and not what any girl or mom shoots for with the hair.

After it was all out, I DEEP conditioned it several times, as it was just so very dry.  It will need more deep conditioning this week too and some babying to get it back in shape.
Happily enough for her, Sarahbird has crazy thick hair, it's fragile but she's got a ton of it so even with the expected breakage and loss during the takedown and the natural shedding of hair over the years, we saved literally years of growth, so it was worth it.  
Instead of a teeny weeny afro, she now has this:

So, now I get to loosen up my rusty hair styling skills.  I mean, they are rusty in a big way, it's been over four years since I had to style in a serious way and then I had little girl heads to do.  Now it's a preteen, so we are kind of in that in between zone: not a baby or little girl but not a sophisticated teen yet either.  This is gonna take some creativity and research both.

But she is staying natural, her hair is a glory.
It's thick, it's hard to work with, but it's glorious and it's lovely to be able to see her bone structure and fine lines of features again.

(Ok, she was so tired here, just wanting to be done with it...so looking pensive; 

and being that kind of mom, I still wanted a pic.....)

Sarahbird is ecstatic with her free hair, her head is lifted higher.

(So many sisters, but a happy crew post hair 

- excuse the mess - we were all so happy to be done.)

And that, right there, is worth the effort.