Shoe Adventure

Typically we need to purchase a new pair of school shoes mid year as the girls tend to outgrow their shoes. Their school requires them to wear Reebok sports shoes in all black. Unfortunately for us, their size was just one beyond the easy to wear velcro design meant for little kids. So the option for us was to buy the kids size lace shoes, instead of the toddler sized velcro ones. Angel and Apple cannot tie their own shoe laces yet and this resulted in some chaotic moments everyday. Tripping over their laces and falling down and hurting themselves became a regular feature. Their feet were anyway outgrowing their shoes so I had to relaunch my search for new shoes which fit the school criteria.

 

It turned out to be quite an adventure to hunt down the specific shoe, the Rebook stores in the city were clear in telling us that the stock is done and as it is a slow moving item, new stock will be available only in June, when the new school year starts. The smaller ones pointed to the bigger stores across the city (or cities - considering we live in twin cities). Some said velcro ones are not available in this size, some said sure they are but finding them would be difficult. I happened to scan most of their outlets with no result.

 

In the meantime a PTA happened and I put forth my plight to the class teacher. Fortunately she had noticed the issue they were facing with the shoe laces and so she was willing to relax the rule, as long as the shoes had velcro and looked similar - the brand didn't matter. Great I had some options, but little did I realize that all it did was make me hunt more stores with no results. Again the same story new stocks arrive only in June, I have to get lucky to find something in the left over stock, not to mention in my case I would need double the luck, for not one but two pairs of shoes. Phew!.

 

Don't go away yet the story does have a happy ending so we decided to forgo brands completely and lo and behold we found a shop, one entire shop dedicated exclusively for shoes for little kids in Abids, across from Hollywood. They had the school shoes we were looking for at a very nominal price. I do not know how the quality is or how long the shoes will last, but the shop has so many designs and ranges for little kids that it works. If the shoes last till the short time that the kids outgrow the shoes, it is a done deal. I was impressed with the little flip flops with fruits, tiny mary janes in different colours etc, I haven't seen such a range of design choices for dressing up feet of little kids.

 

Now to the interesting part of the story, I did have my tv ad/facepalm moment. Abids is busy area, very crowded with lots of traffic and with stepping in and out of shops, we were getting late for the next appointment. V decided to go into a shop and check if they stocked kids shoes and I was walking behind him holding the girls' hands being extra careful. We reached the shop and V stepped out of it and one of the girls dropped my hand and went to him. He told me that we need to cross the road to go the kids shoe shop. Whilst listening to him, I grabbed another hand to cross the road. The kid did not move. I kept trying for another 2 secs until another hand held mine and gently coaxed the kid's hand out of mine. At that time I turned to look and another mom was smiling at me (Thank God!) and she pointed to where my kids were, just next to hers. Nice lady I should say, she said Its OK to my multiple sorries :), the little girl was very scared though.