A Diatribe on Girls and Their Shoes

"Where are my shoes?!  I can't find my shoes!"

"Not these shoes!  They're too small now!"

"I can only find one... where's the other one?!"

"I don't like these shoes! I want my pink ones!"

These are familiar refrains around our house.  Four girls means many shoes.  

Flip flops. Sneakers. Sandals. Crocs. Black boots. Brown boots. Pink boots. Cowgirl boots. Snow boots. Rain boots. Black dress shoes. Brown dress shoes. Red dress shoes. Pink dress shoes. Sparkly shoes. Shoes that light up. Shoes with Dora the Explorer on them. And don't forget the slippers!!  

People, we have all these shoes AND MORE in our house.  First of all, they are girls. Secondly, we can't throw any out (well, maybe some) because the next girl will wear them.  And finally, they actually love to wear them.

And so we have shoe bags.

And two special hanging closet shoe bag things.  Just for shoes. And they're full.

And you would think that having all these shoes would make it easy for the kids to find something to wear on their little feet as we try to leave to go to Target for school supply shopping.

You think wrong.

Last night, we made said trip to Target, and the getting out the door was incredibly hard for a couple of reasons, all of which were shoe related.

The Baby, who mostly goes barefoot, was the first problem (well, not her, but finding shoes for her).  She's so little, she only has a few pair, and they are easily wedged down in the couch cushion or buried in the blocks.  So, the search for that took a little bit of time, finally we found some that (spoiler alert) she ended up taking off and continually throwing on the floor in Target.  Searching for her shoes is often time wasted.  

Then, there's the three year old, who has some sensory issues, and so is a little weird about socks and shoes.  She has this one pair of incredibly ratty sneakers that are a size 9 that she loves. She claims they are not too tight, although I am a little skeptical of this, because we tried to put a pair of size 10 and size 11 shoes on her and she cries that they hurt her feet.  I'm not sure what to believe. I normally just let her wear what she wants (choose your battles), but my wife wants her to stop wearing the ratty sneakers, so there was conflict over this while there was trying on of new shoes (which were summarily rejected).  She ended up wearing some black boots (sort of like Uggs says my wife. I don't know about such things).

(SIDENOTE: My wife has this habit of going through shoes or clothes as we're trying to go out the door. So, she's downstairs going through shoes while the perfectly good ratty sneakers are on the floor waiting to be worn)

The older girls usually have a problem of not being able to find a shoe.  The ONE PAIR THEY MUST WEAR is minus a shoe quite often.  This shoe is usually found after some crying and yelling. Mostly this is aimed at nothing in particular although sometimes hatred is spewed at the missing shoe in funny little monologues that go something like this:

"I hate you pink shoe!!  Why do you have to be missing?!  Nobody likes me!!  [note that no one has said anything to her] Why isn't [insert sister's name] helping me?!  [note that other sister is looking for her shoe]  She never helps me look for anything. It's all her fault [a very mean point with the finger in the direction of sister] Ohhhhhh!  What am I going to do?!  I hate all shoes!!  Why do we have to wear them?!  Why can't we all just go barefoot?!  Where is this stupid shoe?!  I'm going to--  Oh, here it is.  Okay, I'm ready."

Ahhh... doesn't it sound relaxing? The house of four girls.