Toddlers and Shoes

I noticed about a week ago that one of the blogger babies was walking funny and every time I put on one particular shoe he’d break down in tears.  So, I did what any reasonable parent of twins would do and gave him a pair of his brothers’ shoes until I could get into town.

I’ll be honest the thought of shoe shopping made me feel a bit nervous, and understandably so.

Shopping is bad enough when you have two highly active, adventurous twin boys, but letting them go free in a shoe shop with all the hazards there are is asking for trouble, by anyone’s standard.

The Blogger Babies are like a pair of bulls in china shop, and slippery little suckers to boot.  It’s like herding a family of mad monkeys into a small enclosed space.

In order to avoid putting myself through this ordeal alone, I organised a family outing (Mummy, Daddy, Bumpy* and the blogger babies) and arranged with the shoe shop in advance that we would be coming so that everyone would be ready.

Blogger baby had gone up and whole size and a half since March; no wonder the shoes he had were a struggle to get on…

I felt like a really bad mummy, we’d only had his feet measured a few short months ago and his shoes had fit perfectly, but he's barefoot most of the time anyway as that’s just how we roll in our house.

Now the last time I bought a pair of shoes for myself I spent about £6, and I am wearing them to the death, so buying shoes every few months at £30+ it doesn’t seem good value.  I have my TAMBA card so I do get discounts but seriously Blogger Babies are so expensive…

I ended up selecting the only pair of shoes in his size (£38 not a bargain), and was congratulating myself on a successful trip when…  Blogger Baby number two started that he wanted to have his feet measured (they were measured last month with new shoes purchased), I look at the shoe shop lady and mouthed “No!”, now this is a great sales ploy – work with your audience even if it is only 2 ½ years old.

The shoe shop lady settle Blogger Baby down and promptly started measuring his feet, there weren’t many customers in… I think they cleared the store when I rang to say we were coming.

Meanwhile, Blogger Baby One had decided to rearrange the entire shop and was in the process of climbing a display, to be honest I figured that a shop stocking shoes for toddlers would probably be fairly used to this and would at the very least have their shelves screwed to the wall so I let Daddy and Bumpy follow him around, replacing shoes on their racks, whilst I oversaw the measuring.

To my horror, he’d too had gone up a size. What is it with children insisting on growing?

Fortunately, the shop had had a big rush on in the kids’ section (being school holidays) so there weren’t any shoes in his size, unfortunately it means a return trip in a few weeks.

Blogger Baby One has now walked from out the shop, falling over his feet a dozen times, by the time we’d walked back to the car the new shoes were scuffed and the knees in his trousers were starting to wear thin.

Next week it’ll shopping for trousers to replace them, and now looking at Blogger Baby Two he’s clearly had a growth spurt since leaving the house and his t-shirt is tighter than a leotard.

Still, we all survived, and mummy has earnt a glass of wine so I’m counting this as a parenting win.

*Bumpy is my 60+ Father who features in most of my posts for care of the elderly (but don’t tell him)