Yesterday afternoon, the following email from Sophie’s fourth grade teacher landed in my inbox, entitled, “little note from Sophie”:

Hi Amy,

I had Sophie dictate a note to you about a little haircutting incident she had today. She was working on her art project for the multicultural festival and it seems she wasn’t very interested in finishing it and thought she would experiment with hair styling. Two strands on her right side are at different lengths. If we want to look at it positively, I’m sure she was trying to layer the front of her hair to frame her face.

Here’s her letter to you:

I cut my hair two times. I cut my hair because I wanted to make my hair softer. I usually don’t cut my hair. It will never happen again. A person from a hair place cuts my hair, not myself. And I love you Mommy and I love you. I want to cuddle with you tonight and I love you so much.

I did love that note (both the teacher’s part and Sophie’s), even though I wasn’t super pleased with my kid. Funny, yesterday I spent the morning re-reading the blog posts I wrote during Sophie’s kindergarten year, marveling at how far she’s come and at how even though her kindergarten teacher was truly amazing, and even though I hid babysitters in the classroom all year posing as “classroom volunteers,” Sophie managed to escape many times — including making it all the way to the crosswalk, once.

So I’m not really surprised that with a dedicated aide and a fantastic teacher, she still managed to whack off small chunk of hair yesterday when no one was looking.

Sophie seemed truly chagrined by the whole thing, ran and hid when I asked about it and when pressed, said she was frustrated during art.

“Well, at least it was her hair and not her ear,” my mother said when I told her.