\u201cDo those shoes fit anymore?\u201d I asked my daughter as we headed out the door to walk the dog. <\/p>\n
I was shocked by what I saw. I thought she was wearing a doll\u2019s shoes. I imagined little toes curled up inside like a roll of paper towels. That they might burst free at any moment. <\/p>\n
She looked at her feet. \u201cNope,\u201d she answered. \u201cThey don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why are you still wearing them?\u201d I asked. \u201cThat looks incredibly painful.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYep, it is,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t feel my left pinky toe. And something just popped in my right foot. I think it was a bone. But I just LOVE these shoes. I can\u2019t think to give them up.\u201d <\/p>\n
She batted her eyelashes and smiled. \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d she said before hobbling down the steps. Looked like a girl with two peg legs. <\/p>\n
Like many houses this time of year, it\u2019s back to school shopping time at mine. Lists for school supplies have arrived, and every day I come home to find more bags stacked floor-to-ceiling with pencils and Crayons and notebooks and other third grade-related items. We could open an office supply store in my living room. If a hurricane comes, we don\u2019t have a bottle of water or a can of tuna fish to survive. But if the school supply apocalypse arrives, we\u2019d be set for months. <\/p>\n
Then there are the clothes. Back-to-school clothes. About this time of year we ignorant parents (I\u2019m primarily referring to the male species here) always have a great epiphany: Children grow. Worse: Children grow, and all those school clothes we finished the year with don\u2019t fit anymore. No, that\u2019s not quite right. They look like baby clothes on giant gorillas. They threaten to cut off circulation to vital regions. They are so tight that buttons become lethal weapons when they pop free and rocket across the room. If anyone shows up to work with an eye patch, you know the reason. My daughter put on one shirt that fit her like a corset. Her little lungs struggled to expand wide enough to get air. <\/p>\n
Inevitably we (the male species) ask the idiot\u2019s question: \u201cDid they shrink?!?\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah, genius, a whole closet full of clothes just magically shrunk! No, couldn\u2019t be that your kid grew. They\u2019re not known to do that. <\/p>\n
Happens every year, but we\u2019re not wise to it. And we\u2019re not keen on the solution: Back-to-school shopping extravaganza! HOORAY! <\/p>\n
When I heard about this, I trudged off to the computer to Google \u201cback-to-school bank loans.\u201d More bags stacked floor-to-ceiling. <\/p>\n
And yet, when we go to take the dog on a walk I still look down to see the same doll\u2019s shoes jammed on her feet. <\/p>\n
\u201cChild!\u201d I say. \u201cThere are boxes of new shoes stacked up like a footwear warehouse in here! Why are you wearing those?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love them,\u201d she says with a bat of the eyes as she hobbles off. \u201cI can\u2019t think to give them up!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cDo those shoes fit anymore?\u201d I asked my daughter as we headed out the door to walk the dog. I was shocked by what I saw. I thought she was wearing a doll\u2019s shoes. I imagined little toes curled up inside like a roll of paper towels. That they might burst free at any moment. She looked at her feet. \u201cNope,\u201d she answered. \u201cThey don\u2019t.\u201d \u201cThen why are you still wearing them?\u201d I asked. \u201cThat looks incredibly painful.\u201d \u201cYep, it is,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t feel my left pinky toe. And something just popped in my right foot. I think it was a bone. But I just LOVE these shoes. I can\u2019t think to give them up.\u201d She batted her eyelashes and smiled. \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d she said before hobbling down the steps. Looked like a girl with two peg legs. Like many houses this time of year, it\u2019s back to school shopping time at mine. Lists for school supplies have arrived, and every day I come home to find more bags stacked floor-to-ceiling with pencils and Crayons and notebooks and other third grade-related items. We could open an office supply store in my living room. If a hurricane comes, we don\u2019t have a bottle of water or a can of tuna fish to survive. But if the school supply apocalypse arrives, we\u2019d be set for months. Then there are the clothes. Back-to-school clothes. About this time of year we ignorant parents (I\u2019m primarily referring to the male species here) always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[543,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1201,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/1201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}