Growing

For those of you I haven't seen recently (say in the past 8 months or so), I decided in May to grow my hair out. The first picture is what I started from. It was taken in January and my hair was still basically that length in May when I decided to cancel my every-4-weeks haircut appointment and grow it out. My goal was LONG! Think, full ponytail long. I've never had a ponytail. Ever. I thought I should try it at least once. I don't even really know what I look like with long hair. I found myself looking at lots of women with long, straight, hair and thought "My hair can do that. I want to try that." My hair doesn't do many things well, or maybe it's that I don't do many things well with my hair. Whichever it is, I *can* do straight. So, I decided to give it a go.

The growing stages have been...interesting. It seemed to grow slowly at the beginning. I even googled hair growth and ways to make it grow faster. Eat lots of protein. Check. Eat healthily. Mostly check (except when I have a cookie attack). I even heard from several people that sweating helps your hair grow. So, despite my usual tendency to really hate being sweaty, any time I sweated this year, I got satisfaction from thinking "My hair is growing! Hah!".

The "experts" say the average hair grows at about 1/2 inch per month. So, I even held a ruler to my hair a couple of times, to try to picture how long it would be by Christmas time. I'm sure I looked pretty funny...staring at the mirror with a ruler to my head.

So, the bottom picture was taken last Saturday. I actually really like the length it's at right now. I discovered this week that I can get it in a little, itty, bitty, scrawny pony tail. I got REALLY excited about this feat! But, I've still got a long way to go before I reach my goal. Although, I might come back to this length if I hate it when it gets long. We'll see.

So there you go...that's more than you probably wanted to know about me and my hair. :)

Merry Christmas!