Not much to shoes from

I swear I never thought I would have such a hard time finding shoes for Baby B.

We skipped the whole shoe thing in the beginning. I subscribe to the belief that babies don’t need to wear shoes until after they’re walking and that babies learn to walk better when they can feel the ground underneath their bare feet. So, we didn’t even buy her a pair of shoes until she was probably 8 or 9 months old, and we only did it then because it was starting to get cold outside. She’s outgrown those original shoes we bought but doesn’t quite fit into a pair I got her for Christmas, so our mission this past weekend was to find some shoes that fit. Seems like a simple task, right? Apparently not.

Now, if we were buying just any old shoe that fit, then I suppose we would’ve had better luck. But we had certain requirements in a shoe that needed to be met:

1. Soft sole. If babies are going to learn to wear shoes while walking, then it’s recommended that they wear soft-soled shoes. She still does not wear shoes when we’re at home, but she does wear them at daycare, so this was an important feature to me.

2. With laces. There are tons of cute slip-on shoes (things like Robeez come to mind) that are popular these days, but Baby B always tries to take her shoes off either with her hands or by kicking them off, so shoes with laces are essentially a must for her. I was surprised by how few baby shoes in her size have laces.

3. Something fairly neutral in color. I didn’t mind a pair of shoes that had pink on them, but I’m not going to put her in pink shoes with every outfit, so I wanted something that was somewhat neutral for flexibility.

I don’t think those shoe requirements are too far out there, but we sure had quite the time finding something that worked. The biggest problem is finding a shoe that has laces. Soft-soled shoes are out there, and neutral-colored shoes are out there, but not that many with real laces (plenty with fake-out decorative laces, though). Finally, after searching at five or six stores, we found two pairs that worked well enough. One is pink and gray and has laces, but the neutral pair we found has Velcro, so I’m hoping Baby B doesn’t discover the joy of opening and closing the Velcro–at least not before she grows out of these shoes!

Once we move on to hard-soled shoes, it’s going to be much easier to find shoes with laces. (Of course, I say that now. The whole “the grass is greener on the other side” thing, I’m sure.) In the meantime, we do have some shoes so our little girl’s tootsies won’t freeze in the cold weather. And the best part? They were on clearance! (Though, by the final store, I admit that I probably would have paid ridiculous amounts of money for shoes that fit and met my requirements. Thankfully it didn’t come to this.)