No Plain Pony November - Week 1

I haven't worn my hair in a ponytail for just over a week! That's a record, people!

The first day was by far the hardest. See, the thing is for my hair to look good I generally need to shower and put some stuff in it. But that is very tricky to do when you only have an hour between when the baby wakes up and when you need to make it to morning mass.

(At this point pre-baby me would smugly wonder, "Why can't this lady just wake up before the baby and shower then? No big deal." Oh, pre-baby me. You have yet to learn that when a baby still doesn't sleep through the night, every minute of morning sleep counts.)

So what did I do? Brought Miriam in the shower with me. Oh yes, I did. She loves bath time but was not such a fan of the shower spraying on her, and eventually just played with the rubber duckies at my feet (I was in her tub, where the mat is really good so there'd be no danger of slipping). Am I the only person who has done this? Do you have any suggestions of some other way to get my bedhead to look better in the morning? I tried a spray gel a few times before but my hair was so gross and sticky by the end of the day that I'm reluctant to buy it again.

Anyway, on to the pictures. Most days I just wore my hair down with nothing special or in a headband.

Regular day with my hair down. (Sidenote: How do people manage to take pictures of themselves in the mirror? It's so awkward!)

A few days later I decided it was time to attempt one of the hairstyles I'd linked to previously. I had a little bit of extra time before my mom arrived to watch Miriam (but not enough time to shower), so I decided to try this.

Pretty, huh?

Pretty impossible, that is. At least for my extremely limited hair styling skills. My mom came in the door to find me with half of my hair haphazardly twisted, half of it hanging in my face, and Miriam alternately trying to climb my legs and the stairs. I hurriedly finished and glanced at the back of my hair in a mirror.

"Oh my gosh, I can't go out like this!" I cried in horror. "I'm just going to pull it back into a bun!"

"It doesn't look that bad," my mom assured me. "Just go ahead and go."

I should have known better than to trust my mom. It's not that she would intentionally lie about how I looked. It's that she's my mother and she always thinks I look beautiful. I'm sure I'll be the same way with Miriam. But hopefully I will be able to recognize that her walking out the door like this is unacceptable:

You might be thinking that's not so bad. That's because you haven't seen the back yet.

And believe it or not, it gets worse.

And yes, I did actually leave the house like that. I'm shuddering at the recollection.

The other gals in my moms group were kind enough not to recoil in horror. But when I took a bathroom break, it was all I could do not to run screaming at the sight. It was starting to fall down and looked even worse than the above pictures. I had to do something, and fast.

I recalled a very simple double bun style from this video (the second style she does). I did the best I could and figured at this point anything was an improvement.

When I came home I was pleasantly surprised. In spite of the fact that it was starting to fall out, it was actually kind of pretty!

But apparently that was some sort of fluke. Because when I tried to recreate it, all I could come up with was this funky look.

After all this drama, I was tempted to never try a new hair style ever again. But a few days later I mustered up the courage to attempt this.

And lo and behold, it worked! And I loved it!

Excuse the poor quality. This was all I could get before Miriam attempted to go headfirst into the toilet. Oh and also please excuse the fact that I'm wearing a plaid shirt. I'm still working on that whole dressing well thing.

Not only was it pretty, but it actually stayed in all day long. I liked it so much that I wore the same style again the next day. Here's a picture of it after being in for ten hours, surviving both the rain and rolling around on the floor.

Nice, huh? It felt good to have a success after the fantastic failure of a few days before.

And now I'll leave you with a few new inspiration styles for this upcoming week, with a strong word of caution: try them at your own risk!

Oh, and Joy and KnowledgeHungry are also taking part in No Plain Pony November - check them out! If you're also doing it, feel free to leave a link in the comments! And even if you aren't up for a whole month, if you do something neat with your hair I'd love to see it, so please link to that, too!