So yesterday I was getting Jeffrey ready to go out and noticed that his feet didn't really go into his shoes as easily as they had before. I figured his socks were in the way or bunched up at the toe so I tried to straighten the socks up and then try the shoes again. Both feet were giving me a problem. It never really hit me that maybe the shoes were too small because we just bought these at the end of May. No way he had already grown out of his size 11 shoes two months before he turned 3!!!! I tried several different times to put his shoes on and realized that something was wrong. It was at that point I got the idea to remove his sock and put the shoe on with a "nakey foot" inside. I removed the sock, put the shoe on and tied it up. There problem solved! At least that is what I though until the little guy said, "mamma, boo boo" as he pointed to his toes. I squeezed the toe of his shoe only to find that his toes were pressing against the end of the shoe.
Arggghhhh, we seriously just bought these shoes! Most 2 year old children wear size 8 or 9, what in the world are we going to do with a kid who wears a 12 at the age of 2? I told David that it was time to buy Jeffrey some new shoes and we both just looked at each other as if to say, someone needs to get a job at a shoe store for the discount.
This morning we packed everyone up and drove to the store to find Jeffrey some new foot covers. When we got to the little man shoe section we found several styles that looked comfortable. I sat him down on the bench while David pulled size 12 shoes in several colors and brought them to us. One by one I tried the shoes on him only to find that the size 12 in most of the styles was a bit too big for him. We really needed an 11 1/2 but they don't seem to sell those unless you go to a store where the shoes cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a house payment. Being that we are buying a new pair every other month we really can't afford to use our mortgage money on half sizes.
Eventually, after trying on about 6 pairs of shoes, we found one style that was a pretty good fit. It was big enough to last him (for about a week) but not too big that he couldn't walk in them. They were black and had a little triangle on the tongue that had lights in it which blinked as Jeffrey walked. We thought for sure that he was going to fall in love with these shoes immediately however, when I asked him if he liked them he said, "no, police car shoes". David and I looked at each other and questioned him on what police car shoes he was talking about. I asked him to show daddy what he wanted so he quickly hopped from the bench, took David by the hand and walked him down the row of shoes only to point out a random pair of shoes just kinda sitting mixed in with a bunch of other shoes and sure enough, it had 911 on the strap and a fire station symbol on the side. The best part of the whole shoe was that it had red and blue lights on the side that lit up when he walked. He brought the pair over to me and I put them on his feet and realized that they were really too big for him. I said, "Jeffrey, these shoes are a bit too big, do you like any of the others?" His response, "mommy, police car shoes, police car shoes!" Once again David and I looked at each other and agreed that these were the shoes that were going to get us out of the store quickly. Ultimately, he is going to grow into these pretty fast so it doesn't matter that they are slightly larger than what we would normally buy. Great, it is a done deal and we were ready to go. However, Jeffrey had a different idea. Just before we were packed up to go pay for the new accessory, Jeffrey got down off the bench wearing one shoe on his left foot while the other was stringing behind him with a white piece of elastic and he positioned himself in the middle of the shoe department and began jumping as high as he could. Each time he landed he would look down to see if the lights worked. He did this at least 10 times and people began walking past us and laughing at the kid who was trying the shoes out to make sure they were ok. Finally, he looked up at me and said, "good shoes". That was that. We packed the shoes into their box and walked to the cashier. All peace had once again been restored in our home and Jeffrey had shoes with lights on them. Life can't get much better.
Lesson I learned from this adventure? It doesn't matter the size of the shoe as long as it fills the functional need you have.
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