First pair of shoes

 Way back in November Joel took Willa on a hunting trip for the afternoon, and I took Sadie and Larkin to the mall to buy Sadie her very first pair of shoes.

When Larkin was Sadie's age I had the worst time shopping for shoes. Larkin refused to let anyone measure her foot and screamed and cried so much that I couldn't even find out what size shoe to buy. I'm talking about the kind of meltdowns that made people stare and wonder what is wrong with this child?!! This continued for MONTHS. I tried different stores, different salespeople, I even tried telling the salesperson to not make eye contact with Larkin and just let me do the measuring--but no luck. Every time her foot came near that little metal measurement thing she would just start howling and curl her toes up so you could not get an accurate measure.

I ended up buying Larkin leather booties (for months and months) because it took her quite a while to allow anyone to measure her. Willa ended up wearing all of Larkin's old shoes, so I hadn't been shopping for baby shoes in about 5 years. Let me tell you, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

I walked into Nordstrom's with Sadie on my hip and we walked into the kids shoe section. Suddenly she started pointing like crazy and was getting very excited. I picked up a pair of silvery shoes that she was pointing at and I said, "Oh do you like these?" She grabbed her pacifer out of her mouth, threw it across the room, and said excitedly, "Yah yah yah!"

Sadie let the woman measure her foot and soon we were on our way with her first pair of shoes. If it's your child's very first pair of shoes then they take a picture of your child in their shoes, put it in a little card, and also give you a "Nordy" stuffed animal.