Tiny Shoes

My friend Sarah is amazing and she created these shoes out of scrapbook supplies... they look so real... she has challenged us to use this photo as inspiration for a blog entry... so as usual most things make me think of my children and this picture is no exception.  

When I first saw these tiny little shoes I thought of tiny little baby feet.  Baby shoes are the cutest little shoes ever made, so tiny, so exact, they look like miniture versions of big people shoes.  It is hard to imagine looking at these shoes that a person can ever be that small, yet we all start out this way.  Every baby starts out with their first pair of shoes and every Mom has a story about where those shoes came from...well at my house I have three pairs of these tiny little shoes and a story to go with them :)

Right now my son is about 6' tall and his shoes are about a size 10-11 mens but once upon a time they fit into these...yes these cute little booties once fit my 18 3/4 year old son.  There is 18 months difference in age between my oldest son and my nephew and most of the clothes we had for Nathan were passed down from Robert and these shoes were no exception...except that because Nathan was born in the summer and Robert in the winter, these shoes had actually never been worn.  I thought they were adorable and I would have posted a picture of him wearing them but the funny thing is I don't think I have one...see once he was big enough for shoes he spent most of his time in his stocking feet, or in boots...he hated shoes and although these were the first pair he actually wore, he never wore them often.

I just assumed when I had my second child that they would just wear Nathan's shoes, I thought that would be awesome to have all my children have the same first pair of shoes...well that didn't happen.  My beautiful daughter had such fat feet that we couldn't get them into to Nathan's shoes.  We searched high and low for a pair of baby shoes that were meant for fat feeted babies and the best we could find was these tiny sandals that you could adjust to fit...so much for my idea of all my children wearing the same shoes and good thing she was born in April so that sandals would be appropriate. Same as Nathan I don't have a picture of Ariel wearing the sandals as she hated shoes, she was mostly bare foot and too this day as soon as it is warm the socks come off, the size 10 flip flops go on and she walks around practically bare footed all summer :)

Well when it came to the last one I figured might as well get him his own shoes too, since after all the others had their own shoes why shouldn't he.  So I went shopping for a cute little pair of booties like Nathan's well guess what I couldn't find any, all I could find was running shoes, but I thought they were adorable so I bought them anyway.  I dug deep to see if I could find a picture of Connor wearing his shoes, and it is funny that all the pictures I have of him he is bare footed or sock footed no shoes.  I went to all the hassle of making sure that all three of my children had their own set of shoes to never wear them on them :)  I did find one picture of Connor, can't really see the shoes but he is wearing them and would you believe it is a professional photo of course, when else would he have shoes on but when we were going out :)

It is amazing to look at these tiny little shoes and remember that once upon a time your now 18, 15 or 5 year old child used to be so tiny.  These little shoes hang all grouped together on my closet door and every day I am reminded how tiny my children used to be.  But not only do these shoes remind me of their changes in size but they also remind me that they are three different people.  When I had Nathan I thought I would just pass down the shoes and it would be awesome that they would all have worn the same shoes, but I know see that as neat as that would have been I would have been putting my children in a mold, expecting the second to be like the first, and the third to be like the first two...and they are not.  I won't say that the shoes they wore as babies match their personalities today but I will say that as different as those three pairs of shoes are so are my children, and just like the little shoes I adore each one in their own way.

(For those of you who are questioning this post I do have a step daughter but I know nothing about her first pair of shoes as she was almost 6 when I met her and I have never seen her first shoes).