Another First for Wiley

At Daddy's encouragement, and after a few days of difficult deliberation, Mommy finally realized it was time for Wiley's Official First Hair Cut. He had a trim off the top before our trip to Madang in April, but his curls in back had remained untouched (giving him a bit of a mullet, no less). Lately, however, we began to notice that Wiley was looking rather shaggy. It was harder and harder for him to see, as his hair hung over his eyes, and his curls had so much length and weight that they were no longer very curly, hanging loosely down his neck. (Although Wiley had discovered that he liked the feel of the curls brushing his neck when he shook his head from side to side.) So, with some encouragement, when Mommy finished Aden's somewhat routine haircut, she mustered the courage to cut off Wiley's locks. It was not an easy process, and not just because Wiley doesn't sit still for that long. In fact, for most of the haircut, he was wandering around the porch, with Mommy following close behind him, poised with the scissors and waiting for him to pause long enough for another snip. But it was harder for her to see the curls go than to keep up with him.
She managed to hold the tears back mostly, as she watched her baby boy become a little boy very quickly. At one point he turned around and Mommy gasped, "He doesn't look like Wiley anymore!" (She actually said that many times for about the first 24 hours after the haircut.) But once she had started there was no going back, especially when she had saved the back curls for last, and the mullet became more pronounced. It seemed to us that in those few minutes Wiley grew up quite a bit into a little boy, but we'll let the pictures speak for themselves.