Vera's Hair

Ethiopian Hair...every white mom of a brown baby wants to do right by his/her hair. It is intimidating, and there is a certain pressure to make sure it is as beautiful as it should be. Up until recently, I have been relying on "puffs" and our dear Miss Mildred (one of our 2 helpers, who I will describe in a separate posts) for simple braids. I have spent hours researching the right products, and have tried many. We have been doing the "curly girl" method since the summer, which means that we don't use shampoo on her hair because of the oil-stripping sulfates present in almost all shampoos. Instead, we use conditioner only. Right now we are using a special curly-girl product that is called Devacurl No Poo. I also have the Devacurl conditioner and deep conditioner. Typically, I do the No Poo once a week, followed by the conditioner. Mid-week we will often do another conditioning, and then use the deep conditioner every 2 weeks or so. Unfortunately I spent most of my research this summer on conditioners, and didn't stock up on styling products. Currently we're using leave-in cream conditioners to style, but I would like to buy these Carol's Daughters products soon: Hair Elixir. and Hair Milk.

There is a family here that has 2 African-American children. Daughter A. has beautiful curly hair that is almost the exact same texture and curliness as Vera's. Her mom wrote me an email a few weeks ago offering to teach me her expertise in what she has learned so far about curly hair. I have wanted lessons ever since we got Vera, so jumped on her invitation. Vera and Miss Mildred and I all went over to A.'s house last weekend and had a lesson on parting, twists, Zulu-knots, and under-handed braiding. We took one of Vera's favorite Elmo videos and had fun experimenting.

Unfortunately, Vera refuses to sleep with her hairstyles, and insists on "hair off!" before bed. So, this cute "do" only lasted a day.