8 weeks post Ramble

I am 8 weeks post and my NG is really karate kicking lol. My bang area is especially thick, which is very surprising. My edges are never thick in NG, especially at 8 weeks post. Now, I battling with the temptation of relaxing before the predetermined date. I am pushing for March or April....maybe even May. 

My hair is becoming harder to detangle. It causes for increased patience, which I have no problem rendering. Today, I moisturized my NG with Elasta QP moisturizer and sprayed some Creme of Nature Argan Oil leave in conditioner on my NG. My NG took it well. I have came to the conclusion that I will probably have to moisturize my NG everyday. It shouldn't be an issue. I have been putting castor oil on my scalp everyday so I will be able to remember. 

I have increased my supplement intake. I am taking a multivitamin and a vitamin C everyday. Additionally, I am taking 2 biotin tablets and two hair, skin and nail tablets a day. I am increasing water intake, especially drinking more water when I actually consume the tabs. I am also waiting in my Hairfinity package to arrive. I believe that I will be in Hairfinity for the rest of the year if I see some game changing results. My goal is to meet BSL and MBL this year. Hopefully I will be WL before the end of 2015. 

I am planning on keeping my real hair either braided or hidden. I am praying for some serious retention. 

I hope you enjoyed my Sunday ramble. 

-Alexis 

Low manipulation styling for January 2014

Hello. My goal for January is to hide my hair. After trying to hide my hair for the first couple of days of the new year, I started experiencing extremely dry hair and began experiencing breakage. This is where I am so lost at. I can never get my hair at the state where is it well moisturized without going overboard. In addition, I experience sudden-snapping hairs on a regular basis. Enough about my problems, I decided to do low manipulation styles until February. I asked my cousin to braid my hair into a Mohawk style with a single braid going up my head. I rolled my leave out, and this is the style I believe that I am rocking for the entire month of January. 

I think she did a great job braiding my hair. It took about thirty minutes. I believe that after two weeks, I will get her to rebraid me up so I can end January on a good note. I am trying to do low manipulation styles, hide my hair, use castor oil regularly and avoid flatironing possibly until my next relaxer because I am trying to grow out the side of my hair that is quite thin compared to the other side. I am currently 2 days shy of 7 weeks. My NG isn't that plentiful. It's more annoying than anything. It's very dry. I am working on handling this issue and soon. Well, until next time!!!

-Alexis

My mom's update

I must say, I'm absolutely speechless and flabbergasted. Lol. I relaxed my moms hair yesterday at 6 weeks post. She refuses to go any further. I assumed from her horrible non-bonnet-wearing habits that mom would have little progress. The picture on the left is from 11/2/13 and the right pic is from 1/5/14. However, my moms hair was very one sided in the back, so I evened to avoid it looking awkward. I had to cut about an inch, which was a good amount of hair coming   Off her. Her problem side is still quite thin and I am only going to instill castor oil once again but there is only so much a person can do lol. I do not plan on relaxing my mother's middle next relaxer day. I would like for it to grow out again, at least for 12 weeks and see what happens. But she doesn't know that yet lol. 

-Alexis

January Goals

Happy New Year! I wanted to come to you with a blog specifying my January goals.
Honestly, I have not been able to come through on some goals over the last few months. I don't know if it is from lack of motivation or laziness. But I am really wanting to see some great progress over the year of 2014.

Once again, these are my January goals:
-Use castor oil 25/31 days of January
-Hide my hair 25/31 days of January

At the last 7 days of January, I will attempt the inversion method. I have heard great things about this method and I believe that I will incorporate it once a month of every month in the year.


Currently, I have a issue with my hair. I suffer from shaft breakage. I cannot understand it. It doesn't take much manipulation at all, but my hair will simply snap off. So, I have been doing some research trying to figure out how to solve the problem. As of today, I am still suffering from it with no information as of yet. The research continues. Please continue to follow my journey.

Love, Alexis

Bringing in 2014!!! Last post in 2013: Dec goals recap, Jan goals, relaxer update, goals for the new year, etc (LONG POST with PICTURES)

Hello, and happy New Year's Eve!!! I hope y'all are being safe. I am at home and in the process of washing my hair. I am going into the new year with clean hair lol. I wanted to update you on a few things.

1. My December goals were a bust. I didn't follow one goal. Lol. 

2. I have a couple of January goals: 

-use castor at least 80 percent of the month. Roughly, that's 25 days. 

-hide my hair 25 days of the month of January. 

Simple enough, right? 

3. When you click onto my blog, you will see a list of monthly goals for my hair. 

I will do my absolute best to follow this list. Overall, I am trying to retain length and keep my hands out of my hair as much as possible. 

4. I relaxed my hair a few weeks ago. The relaxer turned out ok. 

No length check was done with this relaxer, but I did not gain much length, if any. I was turned off from checking. I didn't want to be disappointed. 

5. How is my hair now? I am suffering from thinning on my left side. It is very clear when I did a length check a couple of days ago. 

One side looks closer to BSL than the other side. My goal: to grow it out without evening it. I rather allow all of my hair to grow to AT LEAST full APL before evening my hair. I am not expecting even my hair out until May or June. 

6. A hair goal of mine for 2014 is to only get 3 relaxers the entire year. I do not have a clear idea when these relaxers will take place. The reason for this goal is because I want to try to eliminate the thinness I suffer from when I relax. Which leads me to......

7. I am considering transitioning to texlaxed hair. I am despising my flat hair. I am despising straight hair. I do not want to be natural, but I am over being bone straight. I am going to have my mind made up by my next relaxer which is months from now. 

8. My mother's hair has good days and bad days. My mom refuses to nap with a bonnet on, and her edges and sides are suffering. It's like once I get it growing good, she will set herself back. It gets so frustrating and I cannot stress the importance of stop sleeping without a bonnet. But I cannot let herack of discipline weigh heavy on me, because the weight can be excruciating. My mother and I work at the same job. My mom goes to bed at night without trying to prep her hair for the next day. When she is up, I'm not up yet. We work entirely different shifts. But when I finally get to work and see how careless she is by allowing herself to go to work with her a complete disaster is heartbreaking. I try to talk to her, but it does no good. :-( 

9. A couple of months ago, I showed pix of how horrible my hair area looked in my room. Here are those pix from the past. 

Well, after months or purging and working, I was not able to get rid as many products as I would have. So, I became a tad bit more organized and bought another storage container. 

This is where ALL of my hair products are located. There are none in different spots in my room. It's all contained here. It's organized and clean. I am so proud of myself for getting a better handle on my overflowing problem. I refuse to have to buy a third one lol. 

10. Finally, I was featured!!! I submitted my hair story to Jen from Just Grow Already or JGA. I absolutely love reading her blog. I am a faithful reader, lol. I was so happy to my story on her page. Please read my featured hair story when you click this link (Meet Alexis). Thank you so much, Jen, for featuring me. I am a huge fan.

I have tons of resolutions: hair related, life related, charity related, etc. I am not sure what I am trying to accomplish in the new year. I am not sure if I will even meet a single goal and/or resolution. Something about goals and resolutions give me something to look forward to. I have not met ANY in the past, but that is no reason for me not to try again this year, and maybe next year.

I will everyone who reads this a prosperous new year. I pray that each of you gain much wealth, hair length and hair health. Lol. 2013 has been a battle. However, I am closing the chapter on another year. The first page of my new book starts tomorrow, and I am promising myself that every day-slash-page will be full of me giving my all and working my butt of for ALL of goals, not just the hair related or the school related ones.

I am wishing you all many blessing in the new year,
-Alexis

Happy New Year, hair lovers!!!

November Goals Recap + December Goals

Well, we are in the last month of 2013. This year has surely flew by. 

These were my November goals and their recaps: 

1. Hide my hair the entire month - 1/2 passed, 1/2 failed

-So, I did well the first couple of weeks of November. However, I got bored and I gave myself a few down days the last two weeks. :-( I'll do better next time. 

2. Use castor everyday - well, I did good the first three weeks of November. The last week was not so good. I couldn't even remember to do so. 

SO...I am ready for December and the goals I have set for myself: 

1. Use castor oil everyday

2. Use castor oil in every wash

3. Take vitamins everyday of this month 

4. Use up some products and show off a more organized hair product area 

My goals are not difficult ones. I am ready. 

On another note, I have bought a hair measuring Tshirt. 

I also purchased some Haifinity. 

I am ready to grow me some hair. I am ready to show off some length for Chtistmas. I am unsure about grazing BSL, but I am hoping for full BSB. 

Wish me luck!!!!

Hairfinity + convo with little brother

Yesterday I received my first package of Hairfinity supplements and started my Hairfinity challenge also on yesterday. I snapped a quick photo of my hair, even though this is an 8 week post pic and my NG is rolling. It is not an accurate picture of my growth, but I wanted a picture for when I started my challenge.

When I received my package, I was ecstatic. However, my brother rolled his eyes and went on a rant.

..:"Are you still trying to grow your hair? You have hair longer than most people around here. Isn't that enough? Why grow longer?":..

His words took me completely off guard. Here I am, I have read all of this information and I have looked through numerous Hairfinity testimonials. I was ready to give this a try again. But my brother's words screeched my entire thinking to a halt. I began to try to defend myself, lol. When I told him I was trying to grow my hair back to where it was, its longest length, between MBL and WL, he told me that it will never get that long again. My heart hurt a little bit. I became a little discouraged.  He is family, by god! I haven't heard any ill words about my hair for a long time. So hearing my brother tell me that I would never grow my hair that long again stung. At first, I began to feel unappreciative. Why am I not appreciating the length I have now, the health I have now? I am grazing BSB, should I be appreciative of what I have? Of course, I should. Just look at my before pic. I have came a long ways. It has taken me a long time to get to this point. I literally clawed my way up by watching videos after videos, changing regimens after regimens, praying, etc. My brother's  words weighed heavy on me. I stared at the bottle feeling selfish. I put the bottle down and went on to get ready for work without taking any supplements.

As I was getting ready, I just threw on some work clothes that didn't need ironing, not putting much thought into my work clothes. Then, I just threw on some shoes that matched, not putting much thought into my work shoes. However, I took time and detangled my hair with my fingers. Even though I am 8 weeks post, I had not problem with detangling, but I still like to do a good job. Next, I moisturized and sealed my hair, especially since the temperature has dropped significantly here. I wanted to make sure I took extra precautions as far as taking care of my hair from the cold. So, I pinned all my hair to my head and went to work. 

After a LONG day at work, I came home and began taking down the pins and moisturizing my hair again. Even though my hair was well moisturized before work, the cold air and wind dried it out a little bit. So, I decided to show my hair just a little be more TLC before the day ended. I put my bonnet on and started working on a few things at home.

 

Then it hit me: I appreciate the health and the length by continuing to take care of my ends. I may want to grow my hair longer, but I am taking care of it to ensure length retention. I may not show my hair, or let it hang like most people around here, but that doesn't mean I appreciate my hair any less. I love my hair; its my hair and I grew it all by myself. I am selfish, but I feel like I have a reason to be now. I was once the but of some family members jokes, that my hair was the worst of the worst and my hair would never look as good as theirs. Now the tables have turned, and I am flourishing and they are struggling. It may seem selfish to my brother, but if we are equipped with the knowledge to do better, who are we not to take advantage of it? Well, Idk if anything I just said made any sense, but I took my supplements before bed, and I will do a Hairfinity comparison pic in a month. 

 

Here is to a better day at work,

-Lexis