NaBloPoMo 19/20: Shoe shopping, the park, and more

Yesterday (Friday) I took Carter to a kids shoe store to buy some dress shoes. I often buy his shoes online, but I wanted to go and have his feet measured. He was actually really cooperative with the woman at the shoe store, and didn't mind having his feet measured. He's currently an 8.5, almost a 9!



I bought him a nice pair of shoes, and I'll post a picture later. I have a new clothes post all planned, but I need to take a few more pictures.

The shoe store was pretty fun, in general.





Today we went to our neighborhood park to meet up with a playgroup I recently learned about. It's for kids who are about 2.5-3.5, so exactly Carter's age. We actually don't know any kids his age in our neighborhood, and I realized that this would be a good opportunity for him to get to know kids he'll go to kindergarten with in a few years. I also got to talk to some other parents, and that was fun.

The park is a short walk through the woods from our house. It's actually directly accessible from our yard, but the area behind the gate is overgrown and needs to be cleared.



This is one of Carter's new shirts I bought at Janie and Jack. It's reversible, which is a fantastic feature.





He mostly played by himself, as usual, though when one boy showed up with a dump truck, all the kids got excited. It was one of the only times they all actually played together!



This was only a few of the kids; apparently there are around 13 families who come. It should be fun getting to know them!

After we'd been at the park for a little over an hour, Carter said he wanted to go home. So we walked back home, and almost as soon as our house came in sight, he said he wanted to go back to the park. Of course, at that point I needed to go to the bathroom, and was already thinking ahead to lunch, so I told him we would go back to the park later. This set off a massive meltdown that ended with him running back through the woods, me chasing him, and then carrying him back home as he screamed. The neighbors even came out to make sure he was okay.

This has been a new thing lately: he makes a decision, we follow through on it, and then he changes his mind and melts down when we don't reverse what we're doing. It's a totally normal phase from everything I've read about this age, but it's still sort of strange, since it's relatively new. Until a few weeks ago, he would say he was done with something, or that he wanted to do or not do something, and that would be it. We got used to being able to take him at his word, and so it's an adjustment for us to see that just because he says he doesn't want something now doesn't mean he'll still feel that way in five minutes. It's like he doesn't think all the way through the decision until a few minutes later, and by then it's often too late. Until recently, he didn't think very far ahead at all, so it wasn't a problem. It's cool that he's starting to think that way, but of course, it's a little weird to navigate.

It's also interesting how much he remembers. He remembers lots of things about our trip to South America last summer, and will start talking about them out of the blue. I'm constantly surprised by what he remembers! I have very clear memories about being his age, so it will be interesting to see what sticks with him.

Finally, here is a picture of Carter in the shower. He loves taking showers these days, and will stay in as long as I let him. Notice the artful photoshopping here, heh.



Tomorrow morning a photographer is coming to shoot our annual family picture and Christmas card photo. Hopefully we'll get some good shots!