New kicks

Yesterday our little family made a trip to the local mall to find some new shoes for Madeline. Until now she's been wearing flexible leather infant shoes - they're fine for around the house but fall short of what an active toddler requires when toddling out in the world.

We went to the Stride-Rite store where we found little shoes (for not-so-little prices, I might add). We found a good pair that are sturdy but flexible and easy to get on and off - a key requirement for our squirmy child. It was interesting that all the little girls' shoes were either completely pink or were adorned with heavy pink accents, while the little boys' shoes came in a variety of more natural colors. Why does girls' stuff always have to be pink? I digress.

Yesterday's was a different kind of outing for us. We had a single errand but let ourselves adapt to the situation. In other words, we just hung out at the mall. We ate lunch at the food court, we shopped for shoes and we played in the bookstore for a while.

It's hard for me to describe how I felt watching Madeline be a part of the world. To watch as she walked happily around the shoe store, got her tiny feet measured (size 4), and watched other kids try on shoes. In the bookstore we just put her down and she followed us across the store, stopping to look at books and then playing with the train set with the other kids in the children's section.

She's turning into a kid now. She's not just our baby who needs to be carried everywhere and tended at all times. She's a little person who's aware of other people and aware of herself. I guess it's like I feel proud of her for what she's doing every day. It's fulfilling for me to watch her think and solve problems and make associations. And I guess I'm feeling a little more sensitive to these thoughts as we approach the end of her first year. It's such a huge milestone and she's come so far in the past 12 months.

Oh, and she loves the new shoes. She walked a figure-8 pattern around our downstairs for literally 15 minutes straight when we got home from the mall. Most of the time she was staring down at her feet, listening to the interesting new "clomp-clomp-clomp" sound the rubber soles made on our floors.

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People familiar with our house will notice in the picture above that the Exersaucer has been retired. Of course Madeline has been walking for about five weeks now and we've had little use for the Exersaucer since she started toddling. Its time has passed, but it certainly served us well.