Shoe Shopping is Serious Business

A little over a week ago I discovered that Malachi was now in dire need of new shoes.  The sides were pulled away from the frame of the shoe.  Since James had a huge project this past week/weekend and wasn't home much, we had to wait until this morning to go shoe shopping.  Malachi had been super excited about getting new shoes (uh, yeah! you should be!!!) We went to Kohl's to see what bargains we could find.  There were only 1 1/2 aisles of boy's shoes.  We went up and down the aisles over and over.  Nothing really caught his eye except the "Z" shoes which I guess he had his heart set on.

The marketing was great on these shoes because they have superheros on the box and he just thought it was the most awesome thing.  Unfortunately, they didn't have his size and even on sale, it was more than what I wanted to spend on tennis shoes.  Also, Sketchers are not the best for all the running that he does during the day, everyday.  The shoes were super heavy and I knew that he would not be happy with how it would affect chasing the other kids on the playground.

I found what I thought was a great pair of shoes for him.  They were New Balance, great for running, and looked nice.  I told him that I wore New Balance in high school when I ran track and cross-country and I thought they made me a faster runner. He wasn't sold on them.  I found his size and he tried them on.  I asked how they felt.  He said the top of the shoe was good, but uncomfortable (???).  I loosened the laces, but he wasn't convinced.  I showed him that the way the laces were on the new shoes are exactly like the laces in the old shoes.  He then said that they felt fine.  But then he noticed the back of the shoe had a little lope (to help pull the shoe on) and he didn't like the loop.  I showed him that if he pulled his pant leg down then you couldn't see it.  After he came up with a few more reasons why we shouldn't get them and me responding to his negatives with a positive, he said the shoes were ok and we could get them. (at this point we had been there for an hour!)  I could tell that he wasn't really excited about the shoes, but the price was right, they had his size, and I thought they were an excellent choice for his active lifestyle.  I decided to make a deal with him; we would buy these shoes, but would go to Shoe Carnival to see if they had the right size in the Sketchers.  He agreed and we shook hands on it.

At Shoe Carnival, they had a bigger selection of possible shoes for him, but didn't have his size in a lot of the shoes he was attracted to.  Also, the prices were higher than what we found at Kohl's.  They, too, didn't have the right size in the "Z" shoes and I had him try on another pair of Sketchers so he could see how the "Z" shoes would feel and tried to explain to him that it would weigh him down.  After half an hour there, we reluctantly left the shoe store empty-handed.  I could tell he was sad about not coming away with the shoes he really wanted, but I really thought that he would learn to love the New Balance.

We got home and I told James about the drama surrounding these shoes.  He was able to talk up the new shoes and showed Malachi that on the shoe it said it's for running.  James suggested that Malachi run inside the house to see how much faster he could run with them.  Malachi did and after a few laps decided that he wanted to run with them outside.  Of course we weren't going to say no so he ran all around the sidewalk for quite some time.  When he came back inside, he told me that he wasn't happy about the shoes at first, but now he likes them.  Whew!

Now comes the question:  If a 6 year old is so dramatic about tennis shoes at this age, what in the world is he going to be like when he's older?!?   And if Malachi is like this, what is Samara going to be like?  I don't want to begin to think about that!