They say motherhood is full of tough decisions.

Formula or breast milk. Sleep train or don’t. Screen time or no screen time.

What they don’t warn you about is the moment you’ll find yourself staring at two rebellious strands of baby hair and thinking, “I can fix this.”

For months, our sweet baby boy had the cutest, fluffiest hair. Short on the sides and back, with a soft, fluffy mop on top that made him look perpetually windblown in the most adorable way possible.

There was just one problem.

Two strands.

Two slightly longer strands of hair on the side of his head that didn’t quite blend with the rest. Every day I noticed them. Every day I attempted to ignore them. Every day I tried some new styling technique to camouflage them.

Nothing worked.

The longer I looked at him, the more those strands became all I could see. They stared back at me like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, defiantly refusing to cooperate.

Eventually, I convinced myself there was a simple solution.

Just trim them.

I even had professional hair-cutting shears tucked away from my brief and wildly unsuccessful attempts at cutting my own hair. How hard could it be?

Very.

Very hard.

It turns out a seven-month-old’s head operates like it’s mounted on a swivel, and his attention span is approximately three seconds long.

Before continuing, let me be clear:

I did not hurt my child.

I simply cut the hair a little shorter than intended.

A biiiit shorter.

So there I was, staring at my handiwork, trying to convince myself it wasn’t noticeable.

It was noticeable.

Naturally, I decided the only logical next step was to even things out.

Parents everywhere already know how this story ends.

It did not get better.

With each corrective snip, the situation deteriorated until my son looked like he had lost a fight with a lawn mower.

At that point, I felt I had only one choice left.

The fluffy top had to go.

The beautiful, glorious, fluffy top.

As I trimmed it down, I found myself cycling between devastation and uncontrollable laughter. One minute I was mourning the loss of his perfect baby hair, and the next I was cackling because he looked so utterly ridiculous.

The evidence was undeniable.

A haircut had happened.

An amateur haircut.

By me.

Several days later, I’m still undecided. Some moments I think it looks adorable. Other moments I miss the fluffy top with the intensity of someone grieving a former life.

The good news is hair grows back.

The bad news is I now understand why professional children’s haircut services exist.

So if you need me, I’ll be over here scrolling through old photos and remembering a simpler time. A time before I picked up the scissors. A time when those two harmless little strands were merely an annoyance and not the beginning of a cautionary tale.

Motherhood keeps us humble.

And apparently, so does baby hair.