But the Shoes Will Keep Him From Escaping the Police!

We've been lucky enough to receive a decent amount of hand-me-down clothes for Scott from my parents' next door neighbors. I'm painfully cheap, so this is a very good thing for us. Except when something is stylistically undesirable enough to us that, even for free, we just can't bring ourselves to put Scott in it. You might think I am the fashion whistle blower, but in fact, it's often M who declares we are not dressing his son in that.

Here is an example. Scott inherited a pair of acceptable looking brown boots/shoes. They are slightly marred by having Sesame Street characters on the side, but I was totally willing to live with this. Then we jarred them and discovered that they light up. Now who set out to design these shoes and said, "What we really need is conservative brown leather shoes that you could almost wear to church if it weren't for the fact that we will plaster them with mythical characters and flashing red lights"?

Anyway, when we first got the shoes they were Claire's size, so despite being a little boyish, I let her wear them. M informed me that this was unacceptable. You might think this was a gender issue, but no. It was the lights. I mean, I'm totally with him on the fact that I would never buy shoes like that, but it wouldn't stop me from using FREE shoes. M told me he'd rather spend the money on shoes without lights. Ouch. So despite her protests, we told Claire they were boy shoes and packed them away. (Whatever works...)

Yesterday, Scott found the shoes. Why didn't I give them away yet? He loves pointing at the Sesame Street characters and making almost intelligible noises regarding them. But most of all, he loves banging them on the floor and watching them light up. I'll be downstairs and hear horrible thumping noises upstairs. I'll run up to see what Scott has gotten into only to discover it's just him and the light up shoes. He loves experimenting about what will cause them to light up. Throwing them against the wall? Check. At least for now they're still too big for him, but what will we do once that excuse doesn't work? Maybe we'll just keep letting him play with them in hopes that the batteries will die. What ever happened to those great old school lights and batteries that would die after one day of playing with something? Darn LEDs and lithium batteries. On the other hand, I don't know if my face can survive his experimentation much longer. Last night he tested his hypothesis that banging the shoes on mommy's nose would cause the shoes to light up. It worked. He thought this was hilarious. I had mixed feelings.