Bad Mommy

So Henry took his first steps last weekend. It was the day before Father's Day and I think Henry was feeling a bit guilty that he hadn't got Andy anything but a scribble drawing so he gave some steps up as a gift. Try as we might, and oh do we try, we haven't been able to capture any of his independent walking on camera. But I swear to you that he's been doing it. No, seriously.

He's training for the UK Crawling Olympics so he can't be seen walking.

This past weekend we decided to head up to Leeds for the day to see Andy's cousin. While we were out and about, I had decided to pop into the Clarks store to get Henry's feet measured. In December Henry was wearing a size (UK) 2 shoe and this spring I bought him a couple more pairs of shoes in size 2 ½ because he seemed to be busting out of the 2's. I've been happily putting Henry's feet in the 2 ½ size ever since. This is why it came as a huge shock to me when the clerk measuring Henry's feet announced that he was a size 4 ½.

“You're joking.”

“No. Well, the right is ever so slightly smaller than the left but he's definitely a size 4 ½.”

“But he's currently wearing 2 1/2's!”

“If you have to struggle to put those shoes on (and I did) and the zipper doesn't stay up (it didn't), then those shoes are definitely too small for his feet.”

“Oh. Oh shit.”

“So what type of shoe are you interested in today?”

“The ones that are on sale please.”

On the left, the shoes I was shoving his feet into.  On the right, his new comfortable kicks.

I honestly felt like the worst mother ever for the rest of the afternoon and thoroughly convinced myself that he would have been walking months earlier if he had been wearing footwear that was actually comfortable. To make me feel worse, every single pair of shoes I've ever put on him he was very insistent on taking off the moment I wasn't looking. His new pair of shoes? He plays with the Velcro but is quite content on leaving them on his feet. Worst Mother of the Year, right here please.

My only defense is that my son has inherited Andy's feet. Both of them have these very long Celtic toes that are very good at gripping rocks (way back when blue face paint was in style) or pens off the floor (modern day). I would always put shoes up to Henry's feet before I bought them to see if they'd fit – now I'm realizing that the little guy was curling up his toes (both Andy and Henry do this a lot) when I was doing the sizing. So yeah, basically I was buying shoes sized for a kid with no toes.

In other news, here is Henry's dance. He stopped dancing pretty quickly tonight, but the first 10 seconds should give you the idea. Pardon my heavy breathing in the background, I was trying to stifle my giggles.