Baby has new shoes

So I had Mia for the weekend. The boys went to New Jersey while the girls stayed behind for a girls weekend in. First, we got Mia's hair cut. This was not a fabulous experience for her and resulted in a price that worked out as a dollar per hair. We then picked out a neat headband that Mia agreed to wear for approximately 12 seconds.

Then, we had a fashion show with her in the starring roll. Let her try on her dresses to show her how pretty she was in her pretty dresses. And just how cute she is. Even went all out with the accessories although she quickly decided to throw her purse on the ground. Found these little sparkly shoes her brother and I got her when she just got home. Two sizes two big. It was the total package look we were going for. Twirled her in front of the mirror where she was pretty impressed by the gleam of the shoes.

Took her to change her clothes and took the shoes off. That was met with a snarl roughly equivalent to the cry of a Tasmanian Devil followed by the shrieking of lemurs when their terrain is invaded by some poisonous snake. All in all, pretty impressive.

Put the shoes back on and the snarling stopped. Took them off again and it started. Still wasn't convinced that she could have that strong of an opinion about anything much less sparkly shoes at 14 months. However, after observing her as she tried to put said shoes back on over her footie pajamas figured that was it. So, she wore them to bed.

Next day, it was all about the shoes again. Futilely explained that they were too big, she would fall on her head, she would fall on her butt, she would fall on the cat. Didn't care. It was the price she was willing to pay for beauty. She then proceeded to work on her catwalk up and down the hall. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, turn. Shuffle, fall, shuffle, fall, shuffle turn. Looked like a little drunk in clown shoes. Every so often stopped to look at me to make sure I understood just how pitiful it was that she had to wear shoes that were too big. Did it until she extracted a promise to find some new ones that were her size. And that is where the search began.

Went to Target, the purveyor of the original white sparkly shoes. Apparently a seasonal item as they didn't have them. Tried the GAP. Nope. Agreed to go to the mall. Walked through the mall at .25 miles an hour - shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop to pick up dirt from the floor, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop to look at the floor and so on and so on and so on.

The difficulty of finding sparkly shoes in February apparently can not be underestimated and such a promise was foolhardy at best and more likely completely idiotic. Who knew there was a sparkly shoe season other than most sentient humans other than me? Based on the earnest explanation of this that I got from all the sales clerks, it is roughly for that period of time that ends 14 days prior to my going to get them, whenever that may be.

So, after doing the mall shuffle for a period that felt roughly like two months, an ephinay hit me. Disney. They have princesses and princesses need sparkly shoes, don't they? So, off we go. Apparently, princesses only need sparkly shoes for that period of time that ends roughly 14 days prior to my going to get them. After sifting through the entire store, we found one sparkly shoe. In her size. Only one. We looked in all the Poohs, the Cars and the many, many princesses and the sales bins. No luck. We expanded our search to include any and all shelves in the store. No luck. They decided that they could just give us the one. However, although they held the opinion that one sparkly shoe is better than none, I just couldn't bear to shuffle, limp, shuffle, limp, shuffle limp the kid through the mall with everyone saying, "isn't that cute" while asking each other what planet the kid's mother came from.

I offered Mia a pair of Snow White slippers that are three sizes too big to settle my shoe debt. She accepted and we shuffled our way out of the place.