MommyTLC

My daughter's recent taste in music stems from the countless house she spends in a house full of teenagers, mostly teenage girls.  So it's really no surprise to me that she's a fan of Britney Spears, Katie Perry, Rhianna and Bruno Mars just to name a few.  When we get in the car, the first thing out of my baby girl's mouth is "put on my music, please."  At least she's polite about it!  This means put on Q102.  Never in the  15 years that I've known my husband has Q102 been a set station on his radio.  According to him "this is what we get for having my parents watch her."  Oh well, bring on the Britney I say.

After reading a post from fellow blogger, The Domestic Diva, about how she recently embraced her "curly girl side", I was curious to see what that was all about. She wrote about how another blogger had gone back to the "no-pooing" way of washing her hair. Ok, that doesn't sound good, right? Wrong! Apparently, the term "no-pooing" means not using shampoo. As it turns out, most shampoos have some form of sulfate as a main ingredient and these sulfates are typically found in dish washing detergent. These sulfates are lathering ingredients that break down oils. Yes, our scalpe naturally releases oils and too much build up of these oils lead to hair looking and feeling greasy and totally gross, but a small amount of these oils is needed to help protect and nourish hair.
Here's where I was really intregued: curly hair needs more of these natural oils than straight hair! And if you have curly hair and you're washing your hair normally with shampoo, you're stripping your hair of these oils which in turn causes frizzy, unmanageable hair. Also, most people who think that just have wavy hair can actually have beautiful curls and never even know it - CASE IN POINT, ME!


I never even knew my hairs true potential until after I read this post! I always thought my hair was just wavy and unruly and that the frizz was caused by the over abundance of humity in my area of the region. In realizy, my hair is not wavy at all! According to Lorraine Massey, creator and co-owner of Devachan Salon in New York City and author of Curly Girl: The Handbook, my hair would be classified as "Botticelli Curls" - yes, as in like the hair in Botticelli's Birth of Venus! I'm thrilled that I found out about this. All this time I've been dealing with the worst hair, always having to tie it back because there was simply nothing I could do with it if I didn't flat iron it or attack it was a curling iron. All this time all that I needed was to stop using, well detergent, basically, on my hair and allow those oh so beautiful natural oils do their thing.

For the past week, I've gone to the "no-pooing" method, stopped using a towel, even for a second, to dry my hair and have purchased the proper silicon free products to style my hair. Rather than towel drying my hair, I've turned to using a cotton t-shirt and plopping (yes, that is a technical term and I've attached a link if you want to know more about it) my hair to help speed up the drying time. As a result, here's what my hair looks like now...


For more tips, check out Curly Girl Method WikiHow.

I have mixed feeling when I see pictures like these in magazines and online.  Yes, they're celebrities and probably have people helping them because honestly, what mother can look that amazing while running around the house chasing after the kids?  I know lots of moms who look great day in and day out even with little ones running around, and I envy them so much!  How I would love to know their secrets to looking so beautiful and put together.  Not only do they look gorgeous but their kids too, every hair in place, not a speck of dirt/food/snot on their clothes.  How do they do it?  Can anyone share that golden piece of advice with me?

I know I'm not the only one that feels like this.  I can't be, it's just not possible!  There must be other moms out there who feel the same way as me.  I can't tell you the amount of times I've gone into work with a pony tail in my hair (because of the lack of time to even attempt to do anything nicer to my hair), zero makeup, and an outfit that I put little to no thought into (some of the times even getting to work to find cereal or syrup smeared somewhere on my back from that morning's breakfast).  I wish I had the time and energy to put forth the effort needed to look my best.

If you're one of those mothers who know how to find the time to pamper yourself and look so beautiful who juggling a toddler, please share!  I would love to know how you do it!