New shoose

Veronica is talking up a storm now, in her own baby way. And Colin can say several words quite clearly — if he feels like it. Veronica’s three favorite words, out of her dozens, are uh-oh, shoes and cheese. She often walks around the house saying “Shoose. Shoose.” as she searches for whichever pair she wants us to put on her. And she almost always wants to have a pair of “shoose” on. 

Both babies love playing with shoes. We keep theirs (current and too small) in a bamboo box by the front door. They can easily spend half an hour or more out there pulling the shoes (and hats and mittens) out of the box, trying to put them on, moving them around the room. To Colin, I think they’re just like blocks or any other toy: they’re fun to play with and easy for him to carry around.

Veronica, on the other hand, loves shoes because they’re shoes. She will pick out her own shoes (or fetch Colin’s for us if we ask), always getting a matched pair, based on what she wants to wear. (You should have seen her the one day we took her to Famous Footwear to get boots — baby girl was in heaven.)

On Friday, one of my co-workers brought in a present for Veronica — two new pairs of shoes. So after work, I gave her the box to open. (We’re not discriminating against Colin here, but the order for his orthotics should be arriving any day now, and we don’t want to get him new shoes until he can try them on with the orthotics.) 

Veronica very carefully opened the box (a little taste of Christmas coming), tore into the tissue paper, and happily exclaimed “Shoose!” Both she and Colin wanted to try them on right away (leading Ethan to proclaim that Colin looked silly in the shoes with the pretty flower bows), and spent the rest of the evening trading off who was wearing which pair. (Veronica seemed to prefer the purple shoes with the bows; Colin liked the green ones with the flowers.) It was very cute.