shoes optional

We went to the shoe store today.  This is no minor undertaking for us.  I'd much rather order shoes online (and likely will still do so), but I thought it important to have the lads' feet measured for sizes.  When we got to the shoe store, I began the unloading process -- a bit like one of those puzzles that has nine spaces but eight squares, and you have to move one into an empty spot to get another free and eventually get it arranged just so.  So it goes for a solo adult unloading the bambini in a parking lot along a busy street.  I digress...

... I come to unload my wee lass and notice she only has one shoe on.  I find the other one and stick it not on her foot but in the pocket of my sling, thinking I'll put it back on her foot inside (of course I forget to and only realize she's wearing one shoe to the shoe store when we get back to the Bambini Ride having bought no shoes).  This calls to mind a trip last week to pick up my elder lad from preschool only to find my two and a half year old younger lad has socks on but no shoes.  I had taken the sneakers he had vetoed out of the car and intended to bring along his boots, but got distracted during that boarding process and left the boots at home.  So here we are at school with two shoeless children (the lass didn't have shoes on either, but this was less of an issue since I sling her).   I carried them both in to retrieve our preschooler.  That morning the elder lad had wanted to wear the sneakers that were at his school in his "just in case" change of clothes bag, so when I got there to pick him up after school he wanted to change into those.  Handy, since the younger lad had no shoes.  By the time we got back to the car, he was wearing his older brother's sneakers -- the ones he'd been wearing at school all day.  Nevermind that they're two sizes too big *and* have been worn all day already.

I hope he'll forgive me for that someday.

Epilogue: having accomplished the sole objective of making it possible for the younger lad to walk himself to the Bambini Ride, he was promptly relieved of his brother's shoes and reunited with his own upon our arrival home.