With summer in full swing, and Pea in day camp all week long, she’s looking so fresh and healthy and… tan. Interesting, since I lube her up with a very high SPF every morning before she leaves the house, and I know they continue to apply sunblock at camp to the campers, throughout the day. There are bottles and bottles lined up atop the cubbies of SPF 40 and higher, and she comes home smelling like the beach, which is merely a mix of sunblock, bug juice and the wind. It’s the best smell in the world. But I imagine that when you spend most of the day outside, it doesn’t matter how much sunblock you’ve applied, you’re bound to get some color.

And so every day, I send her with a hat. A baseball cap, a bucket hat. You name it, there’s always one in her bag. But I don’t think she’s wearing it. Because the part in her hair is looking a little pink. And you know me, pink is scary. I’m so paranoid about sun protection. I knew I had to find another alternative, because I can’t nag her into wearing her hat. First of all, yuck. I don’t want to be that mom, the (s)mother, hovering over her child, barking orders at any and everyone who has any interaction with my children. And second of all, she’s a kid. She’s going to do what she wants when I’m not with her, and although that doesn’t amount to much at the tender age of three, it does amount to her not putting on her hat when she heads outside.

Do they make sunblocks for heads? For scalps? Surely, one must exist. After a day of searching, I found several options. And I decided on Shiseido Refreshing Sun Protection Spray SPF 16. A little pricy, but it had really good reviews as I was looking around. Other options were either really for protecting hair color (something I myself use, since I spend a considerable amount of time outdoors and color my hair), but my daughter’s hair is au natural, so that wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted something that I could spray on her scalp that would protect it from the sun. There were other options, less expensive options, but the reviews were basically that it was not much different than putting actual sunblock on the scalp, greasy, messy, no thanks. This spray is specifically formulated for the scalp. And it smells delicious. And she often reminds me in the morning that I need to spray it on her head. That’s always a good sign, because if she doesn’t like something, she’s going to put up a fight.

So while the spray is probably not as ideal as a hat, it’s better than nothing. It just gives me a little piece of mind, and now I know that she is covered when it comes to the sun, quite literally from head to toe.