Half Steps #sol16

I purchased the shoes from my favorite store during a Cyber Monday sale. They were about a size too big, but I figured that the price was so good that it would be worth the wait until E could wear them. Plus, the grey canvas with the whimsical pattern and blue piping seemed to be appropriate for a toddler.

While I’ve been good at keeping up with his growth spurts, the shoes and the corresponding sizes have stymied me. It seemed like we rushed through several sizes before arriving at his current size, deciding to linger here. Liminal space where the other shoes seem too small and the ones purchased and put away are still waiting.

He wears the bigger ones–the grey ones–as I figure a bit of space cannot be so terrible. And, as agreeable as he is, he doesn’t seem to mind, nor is he hindered by them. I secretly wonder if I’m damaging him by making him wear shoes that are too big, then, I get over it, momentarily.

Today, as we walked home from the Sunday swim lessons that have resumed, I kept hearing his shoes as his steps turned over, a cascade of heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe as we meandered home. Funny, though, that while I wait for that growth between shoe sizes, he’s done other growing of sorts: I don’t feel like I have to reach down so far for his hand (when did that happen? I wondered). He has so many words, and is able to string together chains of them, and I can usually understand what he’s saying. His pants are just…too short, while the waist swallows him. He seems a perpetual version of Lil Abner in the mornings before we leave the house, only after numerous attempts at finding something that fits on the top and the bottom.

Then, the heel-toe would stop as he pointed to trash in the middle of the street, or as we watched the street sweeper make its way past us, resuming again in a flurry of movement that propelled us along. So sure-footed, so determined, leading us home.