The Boy with Two Pink Shoes

The economy is in the dumper, but my husband and I are both gainfully employed, and we can feed and shelter our children and put clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet. For that, I count my blessings every day. We work hard, but so do lots of parents who despite their effort have less to show for it than we do, so I’m grateful to be able to say that right now, my children don’t want for anything.

However, just because we can provide for them, doesn’t mean that they don’t have to wait for what they want or need. While having two parents working outside the home affords its luxuries, it saps one precious resource: .

Just ask my 17-month-old son, who literally spent last week in his big sister’s shoes – her long-outgrown bright pink Stride Rite “early walkers,” to be exact. Isaac is still not walking and we theorized that part of his problem is that he was afraid to be brave in his old shoes, which have a kind of slippery leather sole. The old shoes were making him tentative, so we decided he needed a nudge of confidence in the form of new shoes with rubber soles.

The problem was there was no time to run out and buy him new shoes. So the temporary fix was to dig out a pair of Lucy’s old shoes to give him a leg up on walking until we could get to the store. And it worked – thanks to Lucy’s old shoes, he’s now very close to moving along on his own two feet.

But the price we paid was seeing him cruise around in those screamingly gender specific hand-me-down shoes. Some of Lucy’s clothes can be passed down to Ike with no problem, and it makes me feel good and frugal to get a second life out of her old clothes whenever I can. For instance, today he wore a pair of her old jeans. Because so many little girls’ jeans on the market are a little too hoochie mama for my taste – too tight, too sparkly, and too low-riding to be uncomfortable on an active toddler – I have always bought boys’ jeans for Lucy. The old pair that Isaac is wearing right now is from Janie and Jack and they’re carpenter jeans – completely boy appropriate and they were cute when they were Lucy’s, too. He’s also wearing a pair of Hanna Andersson green and red striped PJs that are now too small for Lucy – no problem, they could easily be worn by anybody.

Yet some girl-to-boy hand-me-downs just don’t work, and for a few days, we all had to cringe and make due with Isaac’s pink feet because getting to the shoe store during the week was just not going to happen. Working full-time left zero time for me to get him to Olly Shoes in the Hunt Valley Towne Center before Saturday morning. I could buy him what he needed, but just not exactly when he needed it. It made me feel bad, but it was one of those cases where we just had to do the best that we could in the situation. And honestly, Ike didn’t seem to notice or care about his girly feet. I figured if anyone dared to say anything, we could just chalk it up to instead of working parent embarrassment.