Hair care at FIVE: our routine

I just finished putting twists in Adelia's hair.  Nowadays I do twists way more than braids.  They're just quicker.  It took me awhile to figure out how to do them right, but I've got it down now: Take two strands, twist each strand tightly the same way (I go right) and then twist one strand over the other the OPPOSITE way (I twist left).  For a long time I didn't have the opposite part down so my twists looked terrible.

I haven't figured out how to manage the twist-out, yet (taking the twists out and separating the hair so that she can wear it down as a style), but I'm working towards it.

This is a blurry photo, but you get the idea:

This is in between two styles- the top half of her head is in twists, and the bottom half (see the beads?) is still in braids that I will take out soon and switch to twists.  I have a friend who is always trying to talk me into relaxing Adelia's hair, but I just love her natural curls, and it is so a part of who she is and I want her to embrace it and grow into it.  So I persist. 

I am so thankful for video tutorials on caring for natural hair.  Last night I searched for natural hair blogs and found this article that features seventeen women who blog or post videos on youtube about caring for their hair.  I searched some of the women by name and ended up watching several videos.  I'm such a visual learner that I LOVE being able to watch a video that teaches me how to do it!  Mark even watched a few with me.  It is seriously UNREAL the amount of time it takes to care for natural hair.  If you ever see a black woman with natural hair you should compliment her, because- wow-- the WORK. 

This is my general routine with Adelia's hair, five years in:

1. WASH: approximately once a month, using a natural coconut shampoo that I ordered a long time ago from Cornrows & Co.

2. CONDITION: Lather on leave-in conditioner after washing (lately I've been using Giovanni).  We're talking lots of conditioner, fingering it through her hair, when wet.

3. TOWEL DRY:  Scrunching up the ends of her hair with the towel- not scrubbing the towel on her head to dry.  The water naturally runs down her curls and drips off the ends, so I just scrunch those repeatedly.

4. SECTIONING: I didn't know which step to put first: detangling or sectioning.  I have to detangle it somewhat- mostly with my fingers- before I section it out (with a rat-tail comb), and then I clip each section and work on detangling the individual sections.

5. DETANGLING:  This (and sectioning, above) is everyone's least favorite step.  Ouch.  It hurts Adelia, and it takes forever to detangle and comb out those tight curls.  I use a deep conditioning mix of Shea Butter, Coconut Oil, Vitamin E oil and Olive oil.   Recipe here.

6. STYLE: Lately, I alternate between smallish twists like in the photo above (for one month) and then I'll wash, etc (steps 1-5, above) and for the next month, style with bigger, fewer sections: banded at her head and twisted out (fatter twists).  I style a couple hours at a time, over a period of days.  (Before ending Day 1: I'll keep the sections by putting in fat twists or braids.  On Day 2 (which may, in fact, be three days later) I spritz it with water and add more conditioner and detangle it all over again before styling.)

7. TRIM: Prior to washing the next time around, I trim the ends of her hair while they're still in twists. (Often just cutting off the rubber band at the end of the twist and the hair with it.)

What I do not do is moisturize her hair on a daily or even weekly basis.  I should really do this.  But I forget.  Every once in awhile, mid-month, I may rub some jojoba on her scalp or the ends of her hair.

If you're an adoptive mom and have tips on doing your daughters hair, please share.  I love learning more about how to care for Adelia's hair!

Hair Day: Photos

Here are some recent photos from our most recent Hair day, which is a day in which all we do is wash and style Adelia's hair. ;)  Adelia loves Hair day because she gets to watch lots of videos and eat lots of snacks, and basically gets waited on all day long by her siblings: they bring snacks, drinks, and movies upon her request. 

The first thing I did was give her a bath and condition her previous style: which was mostly braids (with a few cornrows along the front).  I got her hair all wet and we lathered conditioner on it, rinsed some of it out, and then towel-dried it.  Then I sat on our bed with the little girls and they watched a movie while I started taking the braids out.  Ella joined me a bit later, and she worked one side while I worked the other side. 

After our morning sessions (30 minutes on my bed, another hour on the couch), the kids all played outside, we had lunch, Adelia napped, and then we resumed braid-removal after she woke up.

{Photo: in progress}

I am so very thankful for Ella's help.  She works diligently, enjoys doing it *and* it saves me a lot of time!

{Photo: So that you can get an adequate picture of what we're dealing with.}

Adelia has been blessed with a beautiful head of hair.  So much hair.   :)  I love it.  

In the photo above, Ella is still removing braids on her side while I've started sectioning out my side for the next style.  It probably took us about 2 1/2 hours total to get her braids out, with both of us working at it. 

We took another break for playtime, then dinner, and then I set to work on the new style.  

{Photo: pajama break!  New style almost done}

I did flat-twists on the front (parted in the middle with eight sections across the hairline), and then tried a new technique called African Hair Threading (tutorial here).  I am so thankful for video tutorials.  It was actually very easy to do and she ended up with these thick, boingy curls.  Very cute.  This was much quicker than braiding or cornrowing, and will take very little time to take out, which is a huge bonus. 

{Photo: finally done!  I think it took me about 2 hours to put this style in.}

I have no idea how long these will stay in, though, or what they will even look like once she's slept on them (I'll post updates in the comments for anyone who is interested).  I'm hoping I can get 2 weeks out of this style, but I'm sure I'll have to pull it back in order to keep it in that long.

 * * *

Snacks today: pistachios, string cheese, and fruit leather.  (Always she requests the fruit leather.)

Videos today: Good Morning Maisy, Elmo's World, Psalty.


Best helpers: Ella, for braid removal.  And Mark, for lots of books and songs for distraction during the after-dinner hours. 

New hair tools: Tangle Tamer brush, weaving thread, and new rat-tail combs.  Good purchases, all.  I was particularly pleased with the brush-- it really worked to remove tangles and it didn't bother Adelia at all.  Also, she thought the brush was cute and was able to use it herself which she's never been able to do before. 

Hair care and cornrows

I still think it's humorous that God chose me, of all people, to be the one responsible to do Adelia's hair.

The reason that's funny is that I am a very low-maintenance kind of a girl when it comes to my own hair.

This is what I do each day: I wash and condition my hair, comb it out, and then I pull it back into a pony-tail (*except* on Sundays when I leave it down, but even then I keep a hair elastic around my wrist in case it annoys me) and that's the extent of my hair care. Pretty simple.

I don't use a hair dryer, a curling iron, or any sort of product one would put in their hair, other than whatever shampoo/conditioner is on sale at the time. Heck, I rarely even use a mirror.

Black hair elastics are my sole hair accessory.

Adelia, on the other hand, at just three years of age, has several hair products [most of which I have to order away for, mind you] and enough accessories (elastics, barrettes, snaps, beads, and combs) to fill up a room of our house. OH MY GOODNESS, readers: You have NO idea. I had no idea.



Any and all hair inspiration I receive is from one of these two sites:

Happy Girl Hair

Keep Me Curly

I am so thankful for these mothers who have spent so much time reviewing hair products, posting tutorials and pictures of the various styles they've done on their own girls so that less-experienced mothers (like me!) can learn from them.

Oh, and here is my favorite place to purchase all sorts of cute beads and snaps:

Snapaholics

I wish I took more pictures of Adelia's hair, if only to use as a resource for me when I need to figure out what to do with her hair next. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to take a picture of this girl, because she never.stops.moving! This is the best I could do today:

{front: This is the first time I've done a side part! I like it.
There are 3 cornrows in the front with the heart snaps and everything else is braids & beads}

{back}

Have I mentioned how much Adelia loves braids and beads? She loves the sound her beads make when they click together, and the only thing she ever requests when it's hair time is beads!

This is only the third time I've done cornrows. The first two tries had me in tears, literally. Then I gave up and only recently tried them again. I couldn't figure out how to braid "under" rather than over, as I always have done. I watched all sorts of instructional videos and I could see how they were doing it, but when I got behind Adelia with her hair and my own fingers, I simply couldn't do it.

I think I'm finally getting the hang of it, though. Here's my trick: The only way I was finally able to figure it out was to talk myself through it as I did it. I whisper instructions to myself as I go along (something like "right under...left under... center" (and when I say "center" I know to pull the new hair up to join the center section). Then I repeat.

My assessment, for what it's worth: Cornrows are much quicker than braids simply because you can pull more hair into a cornrow than a single braid, so her hair can get done much faster when there are cornrows in the style somewhere. And that's a very good thing when it takes hours to do her whole head. :)

Things I'm learning about hair care

Not my own, of course. There is little care going on of my hair. I wash it, comb it out and eventually pull it up and out of my face and that's that.

Adelia's hair, on the other hand, requires a little bit more. It's now gotten so long that if I don't do something with it, it gets very matted and tangly, so I have to put forth some serious effort to take care of it. Here's the saga for anyone who is interested:

Adelia's braids came out a week ago. They were in for 3 1/2 weeks total. I could have kept them in for longer (and, in hindsight, I wish that I would have given them another week), but I had time to do it one day and just went for it. It took me about an hour, maybe more- to take them out.

Twists: I washed and conditioned her hair and then I put her hair into twists for about three days. I did this by parting her hair into 9 sections and splitting each section into two strands, then twisting them together and adding colorful heart snaps on the ends of the twists. It was cute. But you'll have to take my word for it because I forgot to take a picture. Cute but not my favorite. I didn't like them NEARLY as well as the braids, and they only "wore well" for about two days. Also, the twists would smash down after each nap or nighttime.

So then I spent a few days trying to figure out what to do next. I wanted to do braids again but attempted it one day and either Adelia wasn't cooperating or Audra wasn't.

Cornrows: The next day I attempted to do cornrows, which was pure craziness because apparently you're supposed to braid UNDERhand rather than OVERhand and I tell you, you might as well have asked me to complete The Most Difficult Calculus Problem Ever for how impossible it was for me to try to braid pulling the strands underneath rather than over. Sheesh. I was practically in tears. And an hour later, Adelia's hair was still undone.

A day later I did some version of Piggy-back braids and ended up with this:

(front view)
(back view)
Clearly I need a little work on the parts. It's her LEAST favorite part, me parting out sections, so I rush it every time.

Anyway.

What I've learned for hair sessions:

-A video is a must. Preferably the Signing Time movie that contains the pizza song for my girl.
-Food is a must. In one sitting this week she went through a mini package of M&Ms, about a cup of raisins, and a large handful of craisins. Lollipops are good, too. I totally bribe her with those.
-Either Mark has to be home (to watch Audra, mainly) or Ella has to be in charge of Audra, preferably in another room.
-It is impossible to do school and hair in the same day. At least when you have as many children as I do.

Braids with yarn extensions

{Photo 1: What Adelia's hair used to look like, occasionally.}

{Photo 2: What Adelia's hair used to look like, regularly. And, oh... I'm going to miss those little poofy pigtails. Because somehow I think that now that we've started the braiding? There's no going back.}

{Photo 3: What Adelia's hair looks like now, with braids.}

The secret to Adelia's cute new braids is a skein of black yarn. I used black Lion Brand Homespun acrylic yarn, because it has a natural "kink" to the yarn, similar to her hair, but I'm sure you could use any acrylic yarn.

Basically you twist a couple of strands of yarn around the top of a section of hair, and braid it down so that the braid consists of two parts yarn and one part hair. Then you braid beyond the end of hair (with yarn only) and tie it off.

The beauty of braids (or so I'm told) is that they should last 4-6 weeks. If that's true, it is definitely worth the hours it took to get those braids IN, because that will save me all the time it takes me every day to do her hair.

I started on Thursday night, and washed and conditioned her hair. Then I sectioned it off (into four sections~ similar to Photo 1) and worked on one of the front sections. Adelia was strapped into her seat, we were having family movie night, and she had a lollipop. Now. The lollipop may not have been the best idea since a couple of times it got stuck in the yarn and that was trouble. But it worked as far as keeping her occupied and happy. [Total time for this first session: about 2 hours, what with the washing and parting and figuring it out for the first time.]

The following morning I approached her with a spray bottle, combs and strands of yarn, and began the other front section, and did a bit of that while she played on the floor next to the kids. [Total time: 20 minutes]

Then I finished that section and began on the back sections when she was strapped into her chair for breakfast. [Total time: 1 hour, 30 minutes]

Later that evening I put on another video for her and worked on finishing the back sections [Total time: 1 hour, 30 minutes]

I spent another 20-30 minutes the following day finishing the back section. And that was that.

I had a wonderfully accommodating subject (for a little girl who NEVER sits still). On two of those occasions I asked her if she wanted mama to work on her braids, and she was all excited and sat right down to do it! I was stunned, but am chalking it up to the fact that she felt like it was special time with me and she actually likes me playing with her hair (when it's not too tangly!)

A couple of other thoughts before you link away:

-I don't think I ever would have attempted this if Mark hadn't been home to help occupy the other kids while I was spending all this time braiding.

-I think the way you choose to end your braids depends largely on your daughter's hair. You'll likely have to experiment a bit. One of the links suggested I just "twist" the ends and then tie it off. Adelia's hair is too loose for that; her hair just untwisted and it wasn't secure. I had to braid to the end and then knot the yarn to tie it off securely.
Without further ado, here are the links to the tutorials I watched to learn how to do this:

Yarn Braid Tutorial Part II:
This was the first one I found. (Begin watching at :50). This was a great tutorial because the camera zooms in so that you can see what she's doing really well. The only thing I did differently is that I used two strands of yarn, as shown in the following tutorials:

How to do Yarn Extensions, Part 1 and
How to do Yarn Extensions, Part 2.
You're going to love those last two links because it's just this cute mom that has learned to do amazing things with her daughter's hair. In fact, I bookmarked her entire "set" of You Tube videos, and that link is here if you'd like to find out other ways to do your own daughter's hair. Trust me, you will be inspired!

I hope this helps!