I cut it......

Ella's hair that is. So the day after my last post I stopped by to talk to James. James is the guy that used to cut my hair when I lived her in Fairbanks, he is from Columbia and is absolutely hilarious. Anyhow, I was going to ask his opinion about Ella's hair and then beg for him to squeeze her in sometime before we leave on August 21st, (he is always booked months in advance.) Let me tell you a little story about James that he told me when I ran into him last February when I was up here visiting. James has a 17 month old son, Jericho. When James' wife was pregnant she had the triple screen and it came back with a high risk of the baby having Down syndrome. They decided to do further testing, but being as Fairbanks is fairly small and pretty remote they had to go to Seattle for the testing. James said that the two week wait for the test results all they did was cry. There baby turned out to be "typical" but you know that he looks at Ella and thinks, wow that could have been my son. Anyhow, I believe that he has a soft spot for little Miss Ella and he just says over and over again in his thick Colombian accent how beautiful she is. So, I show up and he is of course busy with a client but immediately stops what he is doing and comes over to talk to us. I told him my delima and he played with her hair for a couple of minutes and then said "okay, I cut it." Having complete confidence in him I just let him have at her. He asked his client to go sit in another chair then had Ella sit in my lap and began cutting away. It was really cute, she was moving all around diving towards him and trying to eat the buttons on his shirt, and he would stop every few seconds hold her face and say "oh you love James, si si si si." Anyhow, he trimmed up her hair and kind of cut her bangs but not really, it pretty much looks the same except a lot thicker and not hanging in her eyes.
Before I post the pics of her new do, I have a couple of other quick stories. After Ella's haircut my mom, grandma and me went to a baby store here in town. We were shopping away when this man came up and said "when babies do that with their tongues, we say that they will be very lucky."(she was tired and doing the open mouth with tongue protruding. ) He appeared to be from India, and not to be stereotypical but there are not many minorities in Fairbanks unless they are with the military so I am pretty sure that he must be a doctor. Plus I have to say that of Ella's doctors that we have seen, the nicest and those that seemed to know the most about Down syndrome were of the same race as this man. So my new question that constantly runs through my head is do people just look at her and automatically know she has Downs or is it only those that have experience or personally know someone with it. People are always fussing over her, and I always just wonder, and I always feel the need to somehow work it in to the conversation that she has Down syndrome. Then today we were at the mall (ha, not really a mall, more like a hall,) and they were having an antique show, so different vendors had tables set up to sell their stuff. The first one we stop at I recognize one of the ladies as someone I used to work with when I was a dispatcher at the police department. Anyhow, you could totally tell that her and her friend knew, her friend volunteered at my old high school and worked in the special ed classes. So we talked about Down syndrome and how she used to work with an adoption agency and placed a baby with Down syndrome in a family that had already adopted another child with DS. She said the birth parents felt like they wouldn't be able to handle it, and they were so full of regret years later but at least knew that the child was well taken care of. THEN we go to another table and the lady at that one starts saying how great Ella looks, and that she is big for a child with DS and wow, what great head control she has so on so on.
Was it just me that didn't have a clue about Down syndrome before I had Ella? Everywhere I go lately it seems I am running into somebody who knows something about it. Quite frankly though, I am pretty sick of talking about it even though sometimes I am the one who mentions it. Will there ever be a day where it won't be the first thing on people's minds? Doubtful. But hopefully someday I will not feel the need to mention it. I guess part of me does it though because I can't stand the do they know or not game, I'd rather just say what she has and move on. The other part of me wants people to know she has it so they can think " wow, did you see that happy baby, she doesn't seem so different than any other baby!" Okay, I am done rambling. Here are some pics of Ella's new hair do. Like I said really not that different, though I'll be the first to say that I kind of think she looks like a boy, maybe that's just cause she has had her hair in a pony everyday for the last few months, I don't know. Here they are oh yeah and one other thing, Ella looks so tired because she is!! That little stinker was up SO much last night, and having fun with her new game, throw the pacifier out of the crib. Then to make it worse she took 2 pitiful naps lasting 10min and 20mins, so that explains the dark circles under her eyes.