A Dreadiversary

Ok the name is a bit odd, I'll give you that. But this post is about Christine and she calls them her "dreadies." Dreadlocs is a legit name for locs, even though me and G just say "locs," so DREADIVERSARY it is!

I read Christine.

Christine describes herself and her family:


Take one homeschooling mom with dreads and a nose ring, add a hot bald dude, five kids via birth/adoption, a bunch of special needs, an RV park ... yup, that's us.

But she is SO much more than that. Even though that is pretty intriguing in and of itself. I found Christine's blog as a link from Corey's blog, of whom I'm also a faithful reader. As I was reading Christine's blog, I noticed a picture of her Haitian daughter. I was like "huh." Then later I saw a pic of her Haitian son and I said "HUH!" And I said "no freaking way, could it be?" and then "it's gotta be....what a small small world." As it turns out I met her two kids in Haiti a few years before when I was there to visit my daughter before her adoption was complete. Her two kids were staying someplace temporarily and I happened to be there when they were. I had video of them, photos....and I was SO HAPPY to see that they were in such an awesome home. If you read Christine for any length of time, which you should; she posts about such cool and awesome and interesting and deep stuff, you will find that she is a wonderful advocate of therapeutic parenting (this is her YouTube channel link) , and shares her knowledge freely and helps a lot LOT LOT of people.

If there were one short post that illustrates to me how wonderful hairtime is in terms of the closeness and bonding that can take place, especially for kids who are attachment-challenged (one huge reason for keeping kids NATURAL, so you have the chance to do hair together), it would be this one.

Ok so that is Christine.

Now, about her locs! She put them in one year ago, hence the Dreadiversary. She LOVES them, and has written them a love letter, in fact. She has what I guess I'd call organic locs with a freeform twist. They do seem to be separated. I really don't think she wants to pigeonhole them with any kind of naming, though. The thing she cherishes most about them is their wild freedom to do and be...WHATEVAH!

Christine has very straight hair, and I think she mentioned it was quite fine. She put these locs in with NO WAXING. Just washing it clean, letting it separate on its own, then ratting and palmrolling each naturally-forming chunk. She did a video on it here.

I have a secret. I want to have locs. I want the more rolled, cylindrical looking locs, but I don't know if it's possible to have them like that. I have very thick straight hair and it's kind of oily (noticeable oil after 24 hours) but it does have a cowlicky wave to it when it's just hanging there. I did recently get some layers in the ends so that it does "something" while it's just hangin'.  This is me this morning:

I really spend ZERO time on my hair. I don't want to blow dry it, curl it, flatten it, froof with it, poof with it, or anything. Here is my morning hair routine:

Shower. Shampoo. Condition. Scrub with towel. Rip a brush through it. Put sunglasses on as a headband or take an elastic to work with me to put in later.

Amen.

Of course you are probably thinking: STEPHANIE! Are you nuts, if you have zero time for your hair NOW, how are you going to maintain locs? Especially if you want those rolly looking ones?

Well, I dunno. But I DO know that someday my kid is going to be much more independent and may even want to try maintaining her own hair, and may one day even CHANGE her hairstyle (gasp!)  and someday I'm not gonna have any more locs to maintain on a regular basis unless:

A) I live with her or near her (at age 7 I think all kids want their moms to live with them forever, but...um yeah. Age 14? Probably not so much.)

or

B) I pimp myself out as a forlorn empty-nester who just wants to get her hands on someone else's hair to care for. I will walk around with a tackle box full of beads and snaps at the ready just in case.

So, I forsee idle hands in my future. And I'm STILL not going to want to style my fairly boring thick straight hair in 5 or 10 years, any more than I want to style it now. But rolling and ratting and twisting my hair into some new re-invention of itself? Now THAT sounds much more interesting.

Plus (and here is the kicker) it's a totally great way for me to have a reason to put beads and such decorations in my hair. Loc charms with the dingleberries hanging from them? Oh yeah. That will be me.

So, someday! I recently watched a video at KnottyBoy.com of a stylist putting locs into a guys hair...he had red hair with some definite wave and frizz to it. She used tons of wax though (I am still trying to figure out what HAPPENS to all the wax that people with locs put in their hair!). They are located in Vancouver, BC. As in Canada.

So like, road trip, maybe?

Have you ever entertained the idea of locs? If so, do you think you will do it, forreals? If you did it, how? Loctician? Yourself? Do you love em?

Christine sure seems to!

 

Our First Blogger Award!

My friend Corey thinks we are beautiful! She has given us our first blogger award, and we couldn't be more tickled. Corey is beautiful, and I read her blog faithfully. I met her on my very first trip to Haiti where I also met G. She was picking up her second Haitian child and we were at Wall's Guest House together. We sat together and chatted and had her daughter's birthday party at Wall's...a wonderful place that is no longer there because it collapsed in the earthquake. But I am so grateful to Corey and her family for answering enduring my few several  million questions on that first trip, and sharing their experiences with me. Her oldest daughter Jess was 9 or 10, I think, and was REALLY into Littlest Pet Shop. She and her little sister Tina wrote down "observations" every day in a notebook. Tina couldn't actually write yet and just made lots of marks, but she wanted to do everything that her big sister did! I also remember poor Jess was COATED in mosquito bites (worse than me. I didn't think that was possible) and klonked her head on the side of the pool one day and had to get stitches! Anyway, Corey has gone through a lot since all of her children have come home, but just keeps on swimmin'! And THAT is beautiful!

So, we here at KeepMeCurly want to recognize three beautiful blogs that are on a mission like we are....to keep hair beautiful and naturally curly. And to celebrate it!

1. Hair With Purpose - Just the name alone is beautiful! Andrea and Jennifer have two biracial girls. They are getting older and I love seeing that the girls are still natural. If you read their latest post on their blog, you will see why they are beautiful! That is what the post is all about!

2. Princess Hairstyles - The amount of time and love that this Mom spends on her daughter's intricate hairstyles can't be anything BUT beautiful! Katie has gotten a lot of her inspiration for styles from this blog, even though the styles she does are on very straight hair. But braiding is braiding and these braids are byoooootiful (we can tell her "little princess" feels very beautiful too!)

3. Cherish My Daughter - This is Natacha's blog, and she is Mom to FOUR "mocha girls." She styles all their hair and has learned from trial and error what works.  She is chemical-free and dedicated to making sure they feel beautiful and great about themselves. We are amazed at how busy she must be with four heads of hair to style, plus her own! This video in particular hit home with me, because I have thought about this a lot with G....and what she says is, I think...beautiful!

If you are one of the above, here are the rules:

Post the award on your blog, link back to the person that gave it to you, and give it to whomever you want to. But make sure they are beautiful.  You cannot give ugly people the beautiful blogger award.  It would just be wrong!

G's Latest Style - Simple Big Cornrows ALSO Link to a Boy's Locs Post

We were just having a conversation on the Yahoo Hair and Skin Care group about Locs....to Loc or not to Loc, that was the question. :)

As I mentioned in a previous post in G's Story, I never did many cornrows on her before her locs. I do regret it now. They cramped my hand but I think I just needed to relax a little and practice more, and wait for her hair to grow out more in the back. Once we did locs I reveled in putting in lots of easy ponytails and letting her wear her hair down or with just a head band.

But now, I find I really CAN cornrow, and I can still cornrow the locs! As I also mentioned previously, G's hair is not super dense and thick. So when they are freshly tightened her locs can show a lot of scalp. When her hair is hanging down this doesn't show so much. I really have been wanting to "STYLE" her hair more even with the locs. Starting this website and seeing so many of the inspiration sites has...inspired me! I have even been inspired to start braiding my hair just for fun (I had been using sunglasses as a head band at work for a number of months...LOL...I don't spend any time on my own hair, really.) I think I might even grow it out and turn bohemian and just start braiding it all over the place!

It's looking pretty spiffy with those three colors in there....growin' out light blonde, natural color dark blonde, and "i-turned-40-and-here-comes-the-gray" gray! Can you see it there sprouting at my temples? Fun!

So, back to G. It's actually a lot easier to cornrow locs because you don't have to separate all the curly hair sections. You just grab locs and go!

I probably could have made this much more intricate but we seem to be always pressed for time, or I've been doing her hair and it's way beyond bedtime.

What is really fun about cornrowing locs is that they are so FAT! Even thought her locs are not so fat, all together they make the 'rows really chunky.

She told me she got compliments on her fatty 'rows at day care yesterday :)

I am also really enjoying the sun-and-pool bleached tips her locs have. Check this out!

Before anyone worries, we do rinse and condition WELL and her locs are healthy! It's just a little lightening. Her sister in France has naturally lighter pigmentation in her hair, always has, so there may be a genetic factor. I am thinking that this is lightening above the norm for sun and swimming?!

So don't be afraid of locs if you love to style...there is PLENTY you can do! If you are new to our site, watch Katie's "Loc Styles" Video for excellent inspiration! And of course as the kids get older, there is lots of loc jewelry you can get...Phyllis the Video Locktician makes loc jewelry which is really cute.

For tons of info on loc care, watch Katie's series of  videos here. Also, an EXCELLENT post on locs for boys is by another adoptive mom with identical twins from Haiti. They have moved their blog and it's now private, but here's a post from 2007 when the boys were maybe 4 or 5? It is a very comprehensive post.

TTYL!

Information and Inspiration!

***First things first!  Today is the last day to enter our giveaway!  If you haven't done it yet, you still have a few hours left!  Just scroll down to Tuesday's post and read all about it!***

Those of you who thoroughly perused our website will have already seen our links page.  Today we are going to talk a little bit about our favorite hair related resources.  Many of the links you may have already seen, but we are adding a few extras.  Also, later today we will be adding a convenient blog roll on the sidebar so that you can easily follow some of our favorite blogs!

Katie has a tendency to be slightly behind the times when it comes to emerging technology.  It has only been in the last year or so that she has really started to closely follow blogs, in large part due to her obsession with cloth diapers!  (yes, they do have blogs about diapers, many of them!)  The only reason that Katie had joined the Adoption Hair and Skin Care group on yahoo was because her husband told her about it and signed her up.  Thank goodness he did!  Katie has always been reluctant to join the latest online phenomena, like Facebook.  But eventually she comes around.  Maybe one of these days she will even figure out what Twitter is, or maybe she will just leave that one to Steph!

Anyway, the point here, is that Katie never really sought out any other hair resources besides the ladies on the hair group.  One day a few years ago she stumbled upon some hair style blogs for little girls, but they were all of Caucasian kids with pretty straight hair.  Some of them were really great blogs and even though they were dealing with a totally different hair type they still inspired her and got her creativity flowing.  Two of her favorite ones are:  The Story of a Princess and Her Hair, and Adopt A 'Do.  At the time that Katie found these blogs it looked as though there was a real need for a similar type of children's hair blog for Afro hair.

This is where Steph comes in.  She saw that Katie had developed a following on youtube and knew that together they could make a really helpful site for Afro hair.  Katie was reluctant because she was worried about the time commitment needed to make a really good blog.  But eventually Steph wore her down.  In the 6 months it took them to actually get the site put together they found that some other moms had noticed the same need.  While making Keep Me Curly they have come across some other really fabulous hair blogs for children with tightly curly hair!  The Beads, Braids, and Beyond blog is full of really creative hairstyles and is a great place to get inspiration!  Not to mention that the creator's daughter has some AMAZING hair!  It is SO long!  You need to check it out! Steph found the Happy Girl Hair blog and was really impressed with the high quality pictures she had of her little girls' hair styles. So Katie went to check it out and became enthralled with her tutorials on "free" hair. At least that is what Katie calls it, I think the mom on this blog calls it "loose" hair. Katie has always been a little bit afraid of "loose" hair, so this blog has been a big help!  Another mom became a fan of ours on facebook before Keep Me Curly opened and let us know about the cool blog that she and a friend created called Hair With Purpose.  They are doing a giveaway right now for some natural oil products by Macadamia.  Katie also just found a blog from a mom with a cute curly-haired blondy called Curly Hairdo Ideas!  She has some really precious styles AND she loves cloth diapers as much as Katie does!!! Two blogs which are geared toward adults but still contain a wealth of useful info (especially as our little girls grow into BIG girls) are Afrobella for product info and general topics of interest, and The Video Locktician, owned by Phyllis Johnson. Steph is totally in awe of this woman's locs! Someday maybe G's and B's will look like this, if they want. This blog site could help them learn to maintain them beautifully.

There are also some good non-blog resources out there too.  Steph has gotten a lot of excellent natural hair info, recipes, and tips from the Motown Girl website.  This is also geared more toward adult women but it is a great resource for natural hair.  Another excellent resource for biracial hair or how to grow tightly curly hair long and healthy is TightlyCurly.com, the owner's name is Teri and she has very long beautiful hair, and a really interesting story about how she has gotten to this point!

And of course, we can't forget our favorite place to get beads and accessories, Snapaholics! If you live in Australia you can shop at Snapaholics Australia, and if you are in Europe you might want to try Mariposa Import...she carries some Snapaholics items as well as many other products for Afro hair.

We hope this list will be as helpful and inspirational to you as it has been for us.  And don't forget to talk to your kids about what their favorite hairstyles and accessories are.  Look at pictures together and let those creative juices flow!  Together you and your little ones can come up with some GREAT new styles of your own!  When you do, make sure you send us a picture!