Hair

We have settled into a very nice hair routine around here with Anna.  I'm getting much more confident in my skills and I'm getting much faster getting braids in (and out!).  Here's a little update of our hair routine and some recent style pictures.  I am, admittedly, bad about remembering to take pictures of hairstyles.  And it's mostly due to an uncooperative 2 year old who refuses to be in pictures and instead insists on taking them.

Most of our styles are lasting 2-4 weeks at this point. 

1) When I feel like a style is ready to be taken out, usually due to excessive fuzziness and her hair looking like it needs more moisture, I start by taking it all out.  Depending on the complexity and amount of braids in her styles, this can sometimes take 1-2 hours.  The longer the style was in, the longer it takes to get out.  I comb each section as it comes out of the style, the braids do a good job of keeping it detangled and I find that this helps a lot when I go to detangle it later.

2)  After taking a style out, I wash it.  Thanks to Julie's recommendation, we have fallen in love with the Oyin Handmade products.  They do really wonderful things for Anna's hair and it's so healthy and moisturized since we've been using it.

3)  Every other time, I wash her hair with Honey Wash.  The other times, I just do a co-wash with Honey Hemp Conditioner.

4) After washing and rinsing, I condition with the Honey Hemp condition.  I let it sit as long as she'll let me (not usually very long, but I do what I can) and then I add moisturizer, Hair Dew.

5) After moisturizing, I put in a leave-in conditioner to make it easy to detangle.  I use Kinky Curly Knot Today which I absolutely love and seems to be the favorite among all of the transracial adoption groups I'm a part of. 

6)  I let that sit on her hair for a few minutes while I finish up her normal bath routine.  She does really well getting her hair washed/conditioned.  Although she hates the rinsing part.  She will dunk her head in the pool and get her face wet over and over again, but she hates when I rinse with the shower head.  After it's sat a few minutes, I detangle section by section.  I use a wide-tooth comb and I just do a quick detangle. 

7)  At this point, I usually part her hair and "plait" it.  Meaning I stretch it so it's easier to style the next day.  I use cloth terry pony o's and I put them all the way down her pony tails to stretch the hair and make it straighter.  Then she goes to bed with her sleep cap on and in the morning her hair will still be damp, but much more manageable.  Sometimes I have to skip this step depending on what is going on and how much time I have to do hair.  This week, for instance, I just went ahead and did her hair that night.  The quality isn't quite as good, the cornrows will get fuzzy quicker, but it's what needed to happen this week.

8)  The next day, I take the ponies out a section at a time and really go to town detangling.  I start with a very wide tooth comb and then I use a smaller one.  I add more leave in conditioner if I need to. 

9)  Then I start styling.  I'm partial to cornrows and braids.  Anna's hair doesn't hold twists nearly as well and I find myself redoing them a lot.  So although cornrows take longer to do and undo, I can get her styles to last a lot longer and look a lot neater.  I have two styling products that I like, I really like Oyin's Sugar Pomades and they smell so delicious.  I also like Baby Cakes Honey Butter.  This one holds much better, but I'm not as fond of the scent.  After a week or so, her hair starts to get a funky smell.  So I switch back and forth.

10) On a daily basis, I spray her hair with The Juices for moisture and I LOVE LOVE LOVE this.  It keeps her hair very nice and moisturized and smelling delicious.  I try to remember to spray her hair with it before we hit the pool to keep the chlorine out.  After being at the pool, I put a lot of coconut oil on her hair.  We've spent a ton of time at the pool and I was a little worried about what that would do for her hair, but I've realized that as long as I make sure the styles are well moisturized when I do them and I regularly spray with moisture, we're not having any drying out problems.  I really like styles with beads on the end, because it seems to really keep her ends moisturized which is our most challenging part.  She loves the beads, so that makes us all happy!


That's our styling routine.  Seems like a lot, and it'd definitely a lot of product.  I probably spend anywhere from 2-4 hours every 2-4 weeks doing her hair.  And it's usually broken up into two different sessions, taking out and washing and then styling.  I enjoy doing her hair and I love looking at style ideas.  I like to switch it up and I make sure to change her part lines each time to avoid stressing out her scalp and avoid breakage.

Here are some recent pictures.

Cornrows into two braided pig tails

Obviously a 4th of July do :-)

The freshly combed out fro.  She's got a LOT of hair...

Different cornrows into braided pig tails.  I just took these out yesterday.

Her current style.  She's got some triangle corn rows and braids on top and just cornrows and braids with beads in the back

Top view.

From a while ago.  Some corn rows and puffs.  I figured out quickly that puffs and chlorine didn't go very well together.  They got really dry really fast.

In between styles, we just gave her one puff.  She looked so cute with it!  Unfortunately it looked pretty gnarly by the end of the evening.  It's like velcro, it collects just about everything.

Lots of braids and beads.  This one took me forever to get out, but it lasted a whole month and looked really good for a LONG time.