Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

The preceding words whimpered forth from my ears after the haircut from hell today. We tried doing the right things – took J-man in at a time when he’s not too tired, but awake enough that he’s not grumpy, so not too early but not too late. We did brushing and joint compressions. We did big squeezes. We had balloons and bubbles. We brought along the Leah’s Farm Signing Time DVD.

I still ended up essentially holding the J-man down while Tim held his hands, and the AWESOME woman at JJ’s Kids Cuts snipped quickly. He screamed and cried and fought pretty much through the whole thing. Maybe next time we will just go for the clippers, because at least then she can just zip around his head, and it won’t matter where she hits as long as it all gets cut eventually.

The experience wasn’t pretty. The haircut looks good though.

Also not pretty? Trying to get clumps of wet hair out of your cleavage in public.

For some additional background on Mary’s above post, over the 2 1/2 years of J-Man’s life, the person in our family who has had the fewest haircuts - by far - is Mary. Until I started getting buzz cuts every two weeks, it was a pretty even race between J-Man and me. By our count, he’s had 14 haircuts in 30 months, with his first at 4 months. His hair grows like absolute mad.

About four weeks after it’s cut, it looks like a mop. We limp along as long as we can after that until we absolutely have to go. If it starts getting down in his eyes and ears, it drives him crazy. We can’t win either way.

We’ve been going to a place that specializes in kids’ haircuts. At first, the haircuts weren’t so tough to deal with. We’d just pop in a Dora video and we’d be OK enough to get through it.

About the time of the free haircut (get 10, get one free), things went all to hell.

If you have a sensory-sensitive kid, there’s a good chance you feel our pain and know exactly what we’re talking about.

It literally takes both of us pretty much sitting on him to get through it. If his hair wasn’t halfway to Cousin Itt status, we wouldn’t go through this. It’s pure torture on everybody. He screams the whole time like we’re killing him. He’s so unbelievably strong that it’s nearly impossible for us to hold him.

As awful as it was last time, this one was ten times worse. We used every sensory tool in our arsenal. If you’re a parent of a sensory kid, you probably know about these already. If not, we’ll go over them in a later post. We did brushing beforehand, followed by joint compressions. We stayed outside (which he loves) and walked around in the nice, spring air. We gave him lots of hugs and sang to him. I pressed him over my head a bunch of times because he loves that exaggerated motion. We even brought his favorite video to watch during the haircut.

It worked until she got his hair damp (which came at approximately 28.4 seconds).

We became the parents we always talked bad about, the ones who have to sit on their kid to get his haircut while he screams bloody murder - the parents who have no apparent control over their child. The kids there who were undecided on the whole haircutting issue did not find WildMan’s testimonial all that reassuring.

It simply was a total disaster. Getting his shots was way easier. It ranked right up there with when we all had to hold him down to get an IV in him when he had the norovirus last year. It was that bad.

Afterwards, we went to the local frozen custard joint for some self-medication therapy. Of course, J-Man doesn’t eat that kind of stuff, so it was a parents-only self-pity fest. I got a chocolate shake the size of my head. That would become my lunch. Mary got some chocolate/bing cherry concoction. I gave serious thought to stopping on the way home and seeing how well Kahlua goes with frozen custard. A whisky float - hold the ice cream - crossed my mind, too.

If there’s one good thing to say about it, it’s that the person who cuts his hair each time has limitless patience and is an expert at cutting hair on a moving head on a body that grows fifty extra arms in order to fight with her. It’s got to be like cutting Linda Blair’s hair in The Exorcist.

Well, at least his hair looks nice, which is an amazing feat.