The other Saturday I found myself doing triage with my children and
their shoes. Inspecting each one, I made some moment by moment
decisions on what passed and what didn't. We were, after all, about to
leave to go to a wedding (the one pictured below, two weddings back). What better time to
take inventory of our family shoe situation but for just before we were
supposed to leave? It's too late to suggest that I should've been more
on top of that before hand....
I determined that
everyone was good to go except for two: Miles (7) and Clay (1). I
peeled back the tongue of the baby's shoe and saw a "6". Ok, I'll get a
"7". I left the baby at home with the older children, but nabbed Miles
to accompany me to the shoe shop.
Hurry, Miles. Oh
yes. I forgot. Miles generally takes a very long time with his new
shoe selections. It's as if all the shoes on the shelf belong to him
until he makes his final selection. These? No, these? Hurry, Miles.
Not those, those are too expensive. Those are fine....none in your
size? How about these?
As Miles scans the shelves
for shoes to his liking, I scan the shelf for anything in a baby size
"7". It's amazing how the very size you are looking for is sold out
when you are in a hurry. Ah! Size "7". Not too shabby. I'll take
those.
I help Miles find his size in the style he
likes. He opts to put his old beaters in the box and wear the new ones
out of the store. Good thinking, that way he won't need to change shoes
when he gets home.
We race home (doing the speed
limit, of course) and I find the baby. I plunk him down and whip the
paper wads out of his new shoes. I twist and wiggle the shoes onto his
feet and tie them up. I can tell he is not happy to be thus encumbered.
I back away slowly, speaking affirming words of how lovely the shoes
are, blah, blah, blah. Good boy, now let Mommy go get ready for the
wedding.....
I return to the kitchen where I left Clay
and what do I see but a stocking footed baby joyously running past me.
Hey, what happened to your new shoes? Clay, where are your shoes???
He
doesn't talk much, Clay doesn't, but he is a smart little fellow. He
takes a hold of my skirt and leads me to the basement steps and points
down. I think he even giggled. There were his new little shoes. He
had removed them from his feet and tossed them down the basement steps
in a gesture of triumphant finality.
I retrieved them
and put them back on him. By this time, I tucked the squalling child
under my arm, threw the diaper bag over my shoulder and headed for the
van. We were going to be late for the wedding if we didn't hurry up.
Do
you know that boy refused to wear those shoes that day? Of course I
wasn't about to force the issue on him during a wedding. Later I tried
to coax him to make friends with his new shoes so he'd be more willing
to keep them on his feet next time. I think they are now on amicable
terms, but I know he still prefers his barn boots or being barefooted.
What
I haven't mentioned up until now is that while I was wrestling my small
son about his shoes, Daddy wasn't even home although he was also
planning to attend the wedding with us. Where was he, you might wonder?
Millersburg
Tire. To his credit, he didn't want to be there any more than I wanted
him gone at that moment. He was getting a new loader tire because
*somebody* managed to impale the tire with the claw end of a hoe that
had been hidden in the snow. He got the new tire, jammed it onto the
loader, got the cows fed and arrived at the wedding after us although
somewhat late.
The other day Paul was on the phone with
his mom who is in Florida. He was telling her what I had mentioned to
him about Trevor (3) going through a growth spurt or something. He just
seems so extra hungry all the time and is always asking for a bowl of
cereal or other such thing. Gramma just laughed. She said the real
story is that since she isn't home, he isn't getting his quota of jelly
sandwiches that she's been making for him when he wanders across the
porch to her house telling her how hungry he is!
It'll
be a few more weeks until Gramma and Poppy come back from Florida. When
they're home my little children can amuse themselves at their house for
a change if it's too cold to play outside.
I did stock
up on some crayons, coloring books, and Play-doh. Why do I succumb to
the Play-doh thing??? I don't really love scraping up brightly colored
blobs from all the places that it inevitably drops to, and I really
don't like the smell of it. The little people love the stuff, though.
My
fridge is plastered with pictures of cows: pink cows, green cows, blue
cows. At this very moment, my three year old is arranging them so as to
fit in a few more. I'm not sure why they're all those strange colors.
It might be because he couldn't find the rest of the crayons. Or it
may be because his goal was to scrub each page with happy colors and the
hue was beside the point. He's like that sometimes.
Don't
get me wrong, I love three year olds. A lot. This particular child
can have the most trying "problems", though. For instance, he was
given one of those two minute sand timers. You know the ones. They are
shaped like an hour glass and the colored sand falls from the top into
the bottom in exactly two minutes. He kept getting unreasonably
frustrated that the sand would NOT stay in the top every time he set it
down. He didn't want the sand to go to the bottom. This is, by the
way, not unlike many adults with the sands of time. Oh, the explaining I
have had to do with that thing. I finally resorted to hiding it.
Uht-oh.
Not only is my fridge front full of colored cows, Daddy's office
bulletin board is full of them now, too. I wonder what that little boy
did with all of Daddy's stuff that had been on the bulletin board? I
had better go find out.....
~Colleen
