I’ve been known to travel a good, long distance for a haircut. Especially with curly hair, I consider it a worthwhile investment in my own personal happiness to get a class-act cut. Every time I travel to the US, I scope out salon reviews in advance to locate curly-friendly stylists within driving distance of my destination. Last year, over the Christmas holidays, I drove 1.5 hours outside of Orlando to just such a salon. My father was horrified. And I still threaten Pappa P that I’m going to make a special return trip to our wedding site in Amalfi, Italy just to get my hair cut again by the fabulous-o Andrea.

Totally worth it, in my opinion.

Naturally, I’m now subjecting my son to the same level of insanity. I am fiercely protective of my son’s storybook curly locks. My friends, husband and family tease me about it relentlessly. But I don’t care. How can I not be careful when this is what’s at stake:

So not just any hair salon will do for my little one, no sir!

With Pappa out of town, I packed the two of us into the car today and drove 60 kilometers away to this shopping centre in Las Palmas. Now, I realize all you slightly-more-sane people out there think that’s a long way to drive for a kid’s haircut. And you’re probably right. But I’d been searching all over for one of those fun-themed kids’ salons, and I finally struck gold:

Cars and trucks and toys and songs and films…. oh my!

With so many distractions, my typically-restless little boy was completely struck dumb. He sat quietly in his green army truck “salon chair” for the entire ten minutes of the haircut. This is approximately 7 minutes longer than he’s ever sat anywhere since he started walking five months ago.

The result….?

Curly locks still in full force = a happy mommy and a content little boy!

(And let’s be real here folks – the haircut is really all about mommy’s pleasure and actually has very little, if anything, to do with the kid….If you haven’t learned that by now, you’ve been missing out.)