Pretty pink shoes

The Hungry Mouth has developed a shoe fetish earlier than expected. It started innocently enough with socks and toes. She likes the cheery patterns on the grippy-soled socks her Grannie sent her, patting her feet with her socks and then pleasedly ‘helping’ Mummy put them on. Possibly with the help of ‘this little piggy…’, she learned ‘toes’, and can point at any family member’s toes, whether encased in shoes or socks or bare. Then she found some carelessly un-put-away parental flipflops, and had to learn not to chew them…instead she would awkwardly carry a flipflop, half-crawling, half-shuffling, and place them on top of our feet. Now that she’s walking, she routinely gets them out of the cupboard and brings them helpfully to one of us in the morning.

Yes, indeed, now that she’s walking… That throwaway phrase was what kickstarted this whole shoe thing. From the moment she scrambled to her tiny feet and zoomed her new pushalong trolley off down the garden path, we knew our days of not buying kiddy shoes were numbered (and that number was zero). Clearly, those grippy-soled socks were not going to cut the mustard when it came to mud, concrete, knobbly paths etc. We didn’t want those little piggies stubbed.

So, off we went forthwith to purchase baby’s first shoes. ‘Cruisers’, they’re termed, according to Clarks, because she still crawls sometimes. But the sinisterly shaped foot-measurer caused unprecedented, unpredicted distress and total lack of cooperation. Yowls and flailing ensued. Loud yowls. Whole-body flails. We scrapped the measuring idea and asked the nice lady simply to offer a shoe to our daughter. This went much better. She instantly chose a brightly coloured shoe, far too large. With cunning distraction we substituted another style and size. Sadly, according to the nice lady, nothing fitted correctly. So off we crept, shoeless, with a soggy-cheeked, limp toddler, banished back to the Land of Socks.

Our next attempt met with success. Measuring still called for many a tear and a comforting breastfeed…the commemorative Polaroid shows a sad and drooping tiny child gazing anywhere but at her new shoes. But once we’d left the shop with sparkling new feet, the Fetish began. Admittedly, it’s focused on only one pair. But she’d like to wear them day and night. First thing in the morning, she excavates them from her footwear bag, and brings them to us, sits down hopefully, and waves her shoes until we put them on to her feet. Then she’s up and off. Pretty pink Manolos next, no doubt.