Frustrating Moments in Parenting #12

"Anything involving kid footwear"

There is nothing easy about kids' shoes.  Some of the most frustrating moments in parenting revolve around the presence or absence of footwear.  I don't understand how a child can own eight pairs of shoes yet you can never find a complete set when you need it.  Or, if you do find a complete set, it's not the right type of shoe.  The girl has her Christmas dress on and the only pair of shoes I can find are her Dora tennies.  According to my wife, that would be a serious fashion no-no.  I say Velcro up because we're already running ten minutes late to grandma's house and she'll take the stupid shoes off as soon as we get there anyway.

 You can barely see the shoes anyway.

 Besides, pink and red match anyway right?

 Even more frustrating is trying to teach your kids to get the shoes on the right feet.  It doesn't matter if they know their left from their right or not.  Those shoes are going to trip them up.  We finally had to resort to drawing smiley faces on the insides of each shoe.  The girl has watched enough Disney princess movies to know what kissing is now, so we just tell her to make her shoes kiss.  Her shoes are usually on the correct foot now.

These shoes were made for kissing.

 You would think that once your kids know how to get shoes on the right (and left) foot, things would go smoothly.  Sorry, but it doesn't.  You still need to teach them how to tie their shoes.  I'm not even going to get into that, because that's a whole different rant.

Even with Velcro straps, "tying" shoes is frustrating.  For some reason, the boy thinks it is too much trouble to take an extra 1.2 seconds to unstrap his shoe before sliding his foot in.  Instead, he'd rather struggle to ram his Sasquatch-sized sole right in.  If he does manage to break through, chances are, his toes took the tongue with them.  Now he gets to pull his foot back out, pull the tongue up, and resume ramming.

When it comes to parenting, nothing is easy, especially kid footwear.