In the past week or so, I have actually had two different transracial adoptive moms drop me a note to ask specific questions. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that other moms out there are happening upon this little blog and finding the information helpful! That is exactly what I had in mind when I started to write, and it means the world to me. Once again, a reminder that I am not an expert, but merely a mom with a paltry (not quite) 3 years experience, so I'm open to additional suggestions from others. For what they are worth, here are the questions and my take on the answers.
1) What kind of sleep cap would you recommend for an infant, particularly in the summer?
Well, as I've mentioned, I did not even try to keep Little Miss in a cap when she was tiny, in large part because she was born in the middle of summer with a thick head of 
hair, so I figured she was warm enough already. Still, no matter what time of year Newbie arrives, he will be capped at night in order to hopefully prevent the kind of monster bald spot we had with Little Miss. An A-A friend suggested just tying a man's handkerchief around the little one's head, so that's worth a shot. I'm hoping to use the kind of thin knit cap that they give newborns at the hospital. If you have not had a biological child, try asking a friend if they have one of the hospital caps laying around that you could use. Two different friends who gave me baby clothes included these caps with their bundles. Or, if that doesn't work, look for a light-weight, stretchy cap in the baby bedding section of Target. I have one with Pooh-bear ears on it...babies wearing hats with ears just make me happy.
2) How do you get Little Miss to sit still for 45 minutes to do her hair?
That has been a process, no doubt about it. Little Miss had a lot of hair from the very beginning, and I had to start styling her hair at 6 months. Believe me, at 6 months she was not sitting still. In fact, at 24 months she wasn't really sitting still, and I was sure I was doing something wrong. After all, all the folklore I've heard talks about hair braiding (etc) being such a time of bonding for mother and daughter. Maybe it really was genetic and it was never going to work for me! Not so. It just takes time. Find a time of day that works for your girl (remember, most of the styles survive being slept in, so they don't have to be done first thing in the morning), find a distraction technique that she likes, give her breaks when she needs it, and eventually you will work up to being able to do a 45 minute block of styling.
My first breakthrough came with a book called It's All Good Hair. At the beginning of each chapter, there are first person accounts of different parents' struggles with hair care. All moms of A-A daughters, whether biological or adopted, struggle with this. One great suggestion from the book was to wash the girls' hair in the sink. Removing hairwashing from bathtime made doing Little Miss' hair a lot less traumatic for her. People have suggested doing it in front of the mirror because the little girls are enthralled with their own reflection; I've used a hand mirror, and it worked pretty well. Little Miss also likes to play with all of the "pretties" that I have sorted into little baggies (just ignore the mess and clean it up later), and she likes to be "just like Mommy" by taking a comb to one of her dollies. Little Miss is not big into food, but I know some women comb out the hair over breakfast because the kids are distracted. I've had great success with putting digital images on slideshow on our computer, then doing her hair while we watch our favorite photos scroll by.
But the number one distraction technique is, or course, TV. Through the magic of Tivo, she gets to pick whatever show she wants. If she gets up or struggles, I pause the show and remind her that we are watching TV right now as a special treat because we are doing her hair. If she's not going to sit to have her hair done, then we are not going to watch TV. It really works, and now, at 35 months old, I can get through a whole head of twists with only a reasonable amount of squirming. I can even say that it is actually the bonding experience it was purported to be!
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