My Little Gem

 

Today  my star is my youngest daughter, Brianna.  We started her locs with two strand twists  in October 2006, right before the Canadian thanksgiving. 

 My decision to loc my daughter’s hair was considered a controversial one, especially with the family.  After all, I could braid and cornrow, her hair was healthy and strong-what in the world would make me want to put her hair into a style that she won’t be able to remove?  I got a lot of comments that her hair would be dirty, not “neat” in the conventional sense, and that she would be teased at school.  I decided to loc it anyway. 

It was important to me for her to appreciate her hair and allow her to see the magic that is her hair texture, and allow it grow  out to its full glory.

 I myself at that point had been loced for about a year and I knew that we were not going to be doing anything ‘crazy’ to her hair.  I was simply going to allow it to grow.  In it’s own way. 

She liked my hair and had wanted to have her hair look ‘like Mommy’.  (They call her my ‘mini me’ because we have very much the same build, and now, hair!)

Her hair is an expression of herself.  I hope that as she grows and her hair adds length she will see that it was possible for it to swing down her back in a way that is true to her- and all hers!  I want her to hold her head proudly and understand that her coily locs are beautiful in its natural form.  It does not need to altered to suit a form of beauty that is truly not representative of herself, but a western standard  is not realistic to who we are as black women.

Here is her hair before we loced-

This is it as of right now-we took this pics after school today….

 

Her locs are a little over a year old and are now completely formed and I just pretty much let them do their thing.  I latch her hair every 3 months or so, I keep after her to wear a headtie to bed – (actually a hair bonnet of sorts made from an old children’s slip we had).  This is probably the most important thing because with children and locs- lint and dirt is the biggest issue- plus we have a dog so everything is attracted to the hair.  I battle buildup and lint balls all the time…..FRUSTRATION!!!!  She is pretty good with it and trust me- it it worse with her little brother Justice…. but that is another blog post!

Here it is just before Christmas freshly latched:

I am noticing that it seems to be growing pretty quickly now- the stage in which the strands of hair constrict on each other as they interwined seems to passed  so each loc is lengthening….this is making her happy!  She started with maybe 4 inches of hair- through the constriction process the hair went to about 3 inches- and now her locs are about 5 inches long.  She loves her hair and we use lots of pony tails, braids and/or beads to give her different looks.  Locing her hair has not caused any difference and her hair is healthy.

Okay- I took some more pics today of the boys so I am going to post one just so you can see the family- they are all being introduced slowly, but they are all going to be featured soon too…..!

These are my men……

 

Now the youngest-who is front and center actually got his hair done today, I put it in two strand twists, I promise to get a pic of it tomorrow’s because it was late when we finished so i rushed him off to bed without the pics..so this is pre -hairstyle shot.  They are pretty handsome even if I do say so myself, LOL!  I will have more for you tomorrow!