New shoes

I bought new shoes for Isaac today. They are a size nine, although his foot actually only measures a size eight. The shoes look huge on him -- but that's the way the salesclerk wanted it, so that's what we bought. The shoe industry claims that toddlers' feet grow one size every four months, but it doesn't seems to be true for Isaac. He was a seven back in July, the last time we had his feet measured, so it has taken him nearly six months to grow one size. And the result is that now he's finally grown into his summer sandals -- but it's pouring rain!

Perhaps he'll grow into these sneakers by summer, just in time for us to discard them in favor of sandals.

I'll be sick of these shoes by then, though. I'm not crazy about them even now, although I'm the one who picked them out. They just don't look hip enough, which you may recall is one of my stylistic goals for Isaac's wardrobe. They look like shoes a practical middle-aged guy would wear to the mall so his feet won't ache, which is not what I had in mind when I once blogged that I wanted Isaac's clothes to "look like they could belong to someone much older."

We had a big shopping day today, quite different from my recent buy-nothing day. I blew off Isaac's nap on purpose -- for the first time ever! -- so we had time to cover a lot of ground. We went to four different stores before we returned home for lunch, and we went out to three more stores after lunch:

• kids' shoe store (bought shoes)
  
• kids' second-hand store (bought nothing)
  
• toy store (bought nothing)
  
• pet store (bought presents for our dog Walt)
• another kids' second-hand store (bought a lot of clothes)
• ice cream parlor (bought ice cream, duh)
• health food store (bought shampoo)
  

Isaac was a wonderful shopping companion, although perhaps he had it easy -- he didn't have to ride in a stroller, which he hates, and most of our destinations were fun, even for a two-year-old who hadn't napped. The first five stores had toys he could play with, after all!

I saved the health food store, our most demanding destination, for last -- if Isaac seemed like he was getting cranky, I was planning to drop it. But we spent at least 15 minutes just standing there as I read the ingredients in various soap products, and Isaac seemed content and cheerful. He happily examined the bottles and tubes, and several times he declared, "Isaac likes to look at shampoo!" I had to keep reshelving all the items he kept handing me, but that was a small price to pay for getting new shampoo.

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And since Isaac didn't nap this afternoon, how was his evening? Well, it was fabulous! He got a little wild right after dinner, but he never became unhappy, and then he fell asleep at 7:30 p.m. -- two hours earlier than usual. (We'll see if he wakes up at 5:30 a.m., though, because then I might not think it's so "fabulous.")

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Edited to add:

He slept until 7:15 a.m.!