UPDATE: Turns out there are SEVERAL places to get a kid's hair cut complete with TVs and kid-friendly chairs. Oh well. My get rich scheme is a bust. Sigh.
I know how I can get rich in Singapore! All I need to do is open a kids' haircut place - a REAL kids' haircut place.
Back home, we have a host of kid-friendly hair joints filled with distractions for the kids. You know the places... special chairs that look like fire trucks or Barbie, pink jeeps; TVs in every seat; toys to buy at the end. That's the kind of place I was expecting when I heard the place to go in Singapore is Little Red Dot at the Forum Mall.
Forum Mall is one of several that cater to kids here. The smart thing about these malls is that there are floors filled with regular, adult stores and then whole floors with nothing but stores packed with crap for kids. Seriously. There are clothing stores, specialty toy stores, playgrounds, learning centers - the works - all on one or two floors in these various malls. I see lots of other lonely-looking, bored mommies strolling the floors. I actually ran into Heather and Mason (not that she's lonely and bored). Of course, the place is close to Heather and she's one of the moms who told me about The Little Red Dot which is far closer to her apartment than ours. I walked a good hour each way in the boiling humidity. Walking is the best way for me to exercise and for the kids to nap. I've finally figured out all these shortcuts including how to walk through air-conditioned malls. It's like when I first moved to New York and worked in sales. I learned all these underground passageways running under Rockefeller Center. Shortscuts are lifesavers.
The problem is that the salon could have been any adults salon. There was nothing very kid-friendly about the place except for the stylists. That was bad news for Hudson. He hates getting his hair cut anyway, but if you stuff a lollipop in his mouth and turn on the TV, he forgets that he's getting his hair done. Today, he was fit to be tied crying and crying. More so, he was MAD. He whipped around in his chair, starting wagging his finger and pointing with great purpose and kept screaming at the stylist, "No! My hair! My hair! Not you! STOP!" I'm pretty sure he threw some toddler curse words in there, too. He honestly sounded like a guy in a brawl at a seedy bar. The stylist and I were trying not to laugh as he was obviously very serious, but it was pretty darn funny. I think he knows that his trademark curls are his big draw here. He must be worried he won't grab the interest of as many photographers with his hair bobbed short.
The scary thing is that he wasn't tied into his seat. Rather, they just had this wooden board thing that stretched across a regular chair. I'm pretty sure I remember the same kind of thing at the salon when I was a kid. I had to hold him in for dear life.
Somehow, the stylist managed to sheer his golden locks and he looks just great. As soon as she finished, he was back to his happy self. He's been doing that a lot lately. He WAILS when I go into stores that he doesn't want to enter. As soon as he gets his way and I leave, he stops. It looks like the terrible twos are here in full force. Lucky me.
Maisie? She's the dear opposite! She LOVES getting her hair cut. She would get her hair cut every day if she could. I think she likes the pampering. She got one of the best cuts of her life. Yea!
Oh yea! The kids are in bed and I just turned on the TV. They're showing the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. I thought I'd missed them! It's been an eye opener to watch the Olympics in another country. America the great has a whole different meaning. (The John Lennon face was fabulous, but holy cow, George Michael is old!) Singapore won it's first medal in 52 years. Malaysia? It's first medal EVER! We have it good in the US. We take so much for granted like the money to train our athletes.