These boots were made for splashing

I insisted on celebrating last night, even though it would make more sense to celebrate making money by not spending it, that isn't how I work. So we went out to dinner at Happy Teriyaki and then did a little shopping. It was mostly necessary shopping though, I swear! We got more pull-up ("Carrots still there, bunnies on 'em") diapers and a really cheap movie. (Seriously, this is what Ben says to differentiate between the pull-ups and the old baby diapers. Unless he uses one and then it's "Carrots all gone, bunnies on 'em") We also got him some new shoes to replace the ones we ruined. I know, poor people should not ruin their child's only pair of shoes, but we didn't do it on purpose!

We'd gone for a walk in the rain the other day and managed to get all the way to the school (they have a covered play area that both the kid and the dog really appreciate visiting when it's raining) and most of the way home with no incidents when Ben took off running and started stomping in a puddle. His shoes were soaked all the way through, but we still had to go grocery shopping that day. Since they are his only shoes, our options were: Go another day, bring him without shoes, have one of us stay home with him and the other go alone, or try to dry out the shoes. We chose option 4, try to dry out the shoes. We propped them up by the heater vent and turned it up full-blast. Well, the shoes were dry in about 15 minutes but the little liner things in the soles shrunk up and fell out. (They were $10 shoes from Payless. Why spend a lot on shoes he's just going to outgrow?) Well, we'd only had them for a few months and they were still a little big on him ... so we were very sad. Stephen said we'd just make do and have him wear them anyway, making sure that he always has socks on (he hates socks and usually doesn't wear them). This worked OK I guess, but I just feel like a bad person. They can't be comforatable with no cushion under his feet. If I'm bringing in all this extra money that we weren't even counting on, surely we can afford a new pair of shoes for our son.

So we shopped around and I didn't really like anything that we saw. Everything was either ugly or expensive. Some pairs were both! So we headed back to Payless. (It wasn't THEIR fault that the first pair fell apart, you know?) We tried three pairs on him, the $10 pair were kinda cute, but wouldn't really go with very many of his outfits. The second pair, $17, were pretty cute, and actually looked a lot like the pair we were replacing. We were just about to get them when I saw a pair of brown boots — also $17 on sale. The giant sign on them said "WATERPROOF" and I heard the cheesy little "Hallelujah" chorus in my head. Brilliant! All children's shoes should be waterproof.

We bought them and he wore them out of the store. He wasn't thrilled, because they are heavy and clunky and slow him down quite a bit. Plus, he likes to take his shoes off in the car and he was extra grumpy that he couldn't kick these off. (They are tie shoes, but have a secret zipper on the inside for easy on and off for parents. Again, I restate that these are awesome shoes!) So when I got up this morning, I was happy to see that it had rained last night. We'll be sure to go for an afternoon walk today and I'll show him that it's OK to jump in the puddles now because new boots protect our feet. After that, I bet he'll take to them just fine.