Shoe Shopping

Shoe shopping. What more could a girl ask for? Today Lily and I did just that; shopped for new shoes for school. I was really looking forward to this activity with her. She is old enough to have her very own taste as well as some self-control when we are shopping. I thought it would be a good bonding experience for the two of us. Just a bit of girl time.


So, Grandma watched Drew while the girls and I went shopping. We started at the mall and I was planning on hitting 2 or 3 stores before making the final choice. Lily had something very specific in mind while shopping. She wanted "those shoes with the things on the bottom that make you jump higher" (Nike Shocks) and "sparkly fancy shoes that are like Hannah Montana." I was just hoping that I could convince her to go with something inexpensive and something I thought was cute, too. However, I did give her two rules: 1. The cannot be white. and 2. They cannot be expensive. She was totally okay with my rules.

At the first store she found a pair with the shocks that she liked but they didn't have her size. We also found a pair of multi-colored high tops, much like you might see Hannah Montana wearing. However, because they did not have both the "Hannah Montana AND Shocks" they would just NOT DO!! At the next store she found some very cute, black, sparkly shoes. I got them on her feet and she said she liked them.....Then she started jumping and realized that they did NOT make her jump any higher so they just would NOT DO!! You get the picture. And for some crazy reason I was completely okay with letting her go from store to store deciding against perfectly good shoes!!! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

Finally, after hitting FIVE stores (and one store twice) I decided we were done at the mall. I thought that we could go to good ol' Target and find a perfectly good pair of sparkly shoes there. I even thought I had remembered seeing a pair of Nike look-a-likes there as well. NOPE!! There was not one shoe there that she was interested in trying on. Again, why am I letting the four year old decide?! Why did I just not stay at the first store and make her choose between 2 different shoes?! I just kept humoring my FOUR YEAR OLD!! I suppose she is my oldest and she is teaching me lessons. I am learning that even at four, they have a plan to get just what they want from you. :)

After all of this I decided to take her to one more store. I'm glad we went there because at this store they actually had employees that were there to help us decide on a size. The other nice thing was the guy stood over Lily until she decided between the 2 pair of shoes he actually had in her size. She finally chose. She was so excited about the shoes that she had them on in the car and just kept admiring them as we drove home. (She better like them!!!)

Do you remember way back to the beginning of this post? How she wanted the Nike shocks (seriously, what is the world coming to when a 4 year old is requesting such a silly thing?! how does she even know about such a thing?! i HATE trends!!!) and she really wanted sparkly Hannah Montana shoes (AGAIN WITH THE TREND!!). And I had two rules about not being expensive and not being WHITE. After all of our shopping? Do you know what happened? We ended up with expensive, white, non-sparkly shoes with no shocks. Have I lost my mind?