Feet feet feet, and when you have feet, you must have shoes!
What is my fascination with feet and shoes? Not just any feet, since I really hate feet on adults. I could never have a foot fetish, unless that means staying away from as many feet as possible.

No, I mean the feet of my boys. I was utterly fascinated by their feet when they were born. So pink and tiny and wrinkly. But I've never lost that fascination, and watched their feet grow with love, and horror. How could little boys have such BIG feet?

The length of their feet measures their life, and I am left saddened by the tragedy of buying new shoes.

Normally I LOVE new shoes. I am one of those who feels the shoes make a person and no, I don't buy $300 shoes, but I do require my sneakers look clean and come with a name brand. My shoes I buy from Payless or wherever I can find size 12 shoes for women.

Just like my own sneakers, I require name brands for the boys. Yesterday we went to Dicks for new shoes (I love their clearance rack) and my whole size = life measurement tragedy was put temporarily on hold as I squawked, "Alex!!! Why didn't you TELL me your boots were so small?!"

I'd placed a finger on the toe of his boot to see if the size he wore still gave enough room and was horrifyed to feel his toes jammed up and knuckles clearly bent. I would never mutter (out loud) that my son is a moron, but my gawd! He was wearing size 13 boots (that I had just bought in October or November) and was actually a size 2.

The boy was wearing shoes two sizes too small. D'oh!

Now this really began to weigh in. How could my son, my 5-yr-old middle baby boy have grown two sizes in shoes since the fall? 4-5 months. YIKES! Has it been so long since I offered shoes to my tikes? Now I am feeling guilty on top of horrified, annoyed and depressed.

My dh likes to remind me that I ask for new shoes every 2-3 months for them, and I like to remind him that he doesn't provide them for 4-6 months. So we're even :) Now I get to remind him WHY they need new shoes every 3 months.

Holy crow.. new shoes, three boys, every three months. That's no less than $90 to $100 each trip or $360-$400 a year! *gulp*

But they MUST have new shoes, and we've tried the Payless stuff and they get nasty faster and just fall apart. So I've taken to buying Nikes, Asics, Adidas and New Balance, on clearance whenever possible, for between $25 to $40 a pair.

Though this time we found a neat little pair of Chuck Taylor's for Jacker for $18, and he calls them his "Spankin' Choo's" since he'd heard me ask him if he wanted to wear his brand spanking new shoes.

But more about that in a minute.

We grabbed a perfect pair of New Balance for Alex and headed off to the Shoe Dept. for Taylor. He'd fallen in love with the Asics at Dick's that were a half size too small, so it was a chore to get him to focus on another pair. But I chose one and he chose one and then watch the sparks fly as he tries to choose between the two.

I hadn't intended to snag a pair for my 2-yr-old, Jack, but I found those Converse All Stars we wore as kids (and my dh still has a double high pair in our closet that are striking teal and school bus yellow.. sighhh) and Jack just looks too cute in alternative style clothes. He already looks like a sk8ter dude :)

So the sale price was tempting ($17.99 I think) and dh can't resist Chuck Taylor's, so off we went.

Now back to my tragedy... how can my children be wearing such huge shoes? They have Flintsones feet! Taylor gained a couple of pounds and it all went to expand his feet, because the rest of him is still skin and bones.

Taylor age 8.5 = size 3.5
Alexander age 5.5 = size 2 (this one is just scary!)
Jackson age 2 = size 9.5

The kids are getting old, and their feet are getting big. At this juncture there will be no more pink and wrinkly feet around this house :(

What will I do without cute shoes????

- posted by Ginxy @ 3/29/2004 06:37:00 AM