7 Months Natural

7 months...not much has changed from 6 months. I don't really feel like my hair has grown that much from the past month. Below is my hair with no product in it.

I want to talk about my regimen. When I first started the journey I was totally obsessed with the regimen, what to buy, what to do, ya, yah, yah. Now, I'm hitting a natural hair lazy phase and really don't experiment much. I have/had my staples and I go with that.

What I have learned about my hair in the past 7 months is quite interesting. Below are the top 3 things I've learned so far. This will be an ongoing list to document what I've learned along the way...

1. My hair is way less kinkier than I thought it would be. I thought it would be pretty nappy, but its actually semi-fine and fuzzy and less kinky. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think when its kinky you have more variability in the styles you can do. Mine, really just curls up. No twist outs, braid outs, just gel...

2. The more I manipulate my hair the straighter it gets. I wanted this big blow out afro, or these super cute twist outs...but right now thats not my hair reality. I tried 2 strand twist and my hair became straight. I have a few pix of it you can see, but not super wavy like other naturals. If I put a blow dryer to it at all, it becomes straight. Shocking. So, when, if I want to wear it straight, I know I really wouldn't need much heat because my natural texture is straight on its own.

3. My hair is fickle. I have changed gels like 3 times this month. And still don't know what to do. I know the style for me is shingled/smoothed curls. However, how to achieve that is to go through each section with gel and this causes me to have to touch my hair more. The more I touch my hair the more comes off in my hands and the more I'm totally blown. I feel like its breaks more the more I shingle. So I try to wear the style for a few days, but depending on the product I use, it is flake city in the morning. I can do these awesome shingling sessions only to wake up to snow white in the morning. Total blower! So...what product to use? Not sure. I'm guessing some type of butter may be the key for me, but I haven't experiemented much with them. Hopefully as my hair gets longer I will take more chances on products and look into some butters.

My regimen now is:
1 shampoo wash per week with Suave Naturals clarifying shampoo
1-2 co-washes per week (dependent on product build up and flake factor) with Aussie Moist or Suave Naturals
Seal with coconut oil, and occasional mix of grapeseed, rosemary, aloe, and tea tree
Styler - it was ecostyler gel, then tresemme gel, tresemme moose, and now back to IC Fantasia gel
Shingle and finger combing product through
Bonnet at night
No rewetting with spray bottle. Oil in am if needed

Lets see how this changes as the month goes on...