The Liberator

My girl is a shoe liberator. Which isn't nearly as cool as it sounds.

See, I am a fan of shoes, especially cute ones. For myself, for others, and most definitely for my kids.

Sterling on the other hand is a believer in free range toes. Which means she is constantly liberating her shoes.

I  have loved dressing kids since my baby sister was born when I was 5. I changed her outfit every chance I got and even once pulled her dresser over on top of me in pursuit of the perfect shoes that were sitting on top.

So it was written in the stars that I would have fun dressing my kids, and I have. But my girl? Not nearly as thrilled with the perfectly coordinated tiny little outfits I choose as I have been.

In fact, her focus is consistently on divesting herself of clothes as quickly as humanly possible.

Thus the shoe liberation. Because as much as I love to buy adorable little boutique, podiatric-approved  shoes, she loves to toss them.

After nearly every shopping trip, play date and walk around the neighborhood I find myself hunting for a missing shoe. A wiser mom would probably give it up as a lost cause and invest in a bulk shipment of flip flops from Walmart, but then again a wiser mom would also probably have found a better way of wrangling my girl.

I on the other hand repeatedly find myself muttering "oh SHIT" when I realize I need to retrace my steps to figure out where the most recent shoe was released into the wild.

The amazing thing is that somehow I have developed a version of Spidey Sense which enables me to detect when the shoe has left the building.

For instance, today we were out for a walk with Pop Pop when I suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, and looked behind us. There, staring forlornly back at us from the middle of the road, about 30 feet away was one of Sterling's brown little ballet flats. The other one miraculously stayed on until we made it to the front yard.

I guess that the only thing to be said for all of this is that my girl definitely knows how to keep things interesting. Just think, with her strapped into a stroller, if it weren't for her shoe liberating then I might be able to take a whole walk without any mayhem...