A few signs I've passed on the shoe lover gene....

At what age does the affinity for shoes kick in? I think the earliest I remember being really excited about a pair of shoes was in middle school when I had a pair of turquoise and yellow high top Chuck Taylor’s (Converse).   If my daughter is any indicator of how fashion conscious girls can be at an early age surely she'll be into Christian Louboutin's by the time she gets to high school.

 

Here I am trying to find practical, closed-toe, comfortable shoes that can be worn with pants or a casual dress that are school appropriate (no small feat!).  Observing my daughter's classic shoe lover behavior, I've discovered the same standards us big girls have also apply to the pint-sized shoe aficionados:

 

1.  Style outweighs comfort every time.  In a classic example of  "must wear" my daughter had to wear the metallic thong flip flops that were slightly big - every few feet she was yelling "you guys are walking too fast!" because she couldn't keep up. When warned about the perils of wearing flip flops that were too big she claimed "they're not too big - I can keep them on".

So young to be trying to force her way into shoes....

 

     My BFF gave me a bag of shoes her daughter couldn't wear - jelly hot pink sparkly flip flops, silver flip flops with flower  detail, gladiator sandals with gold brads....I'm not sure there was a favorite but there were lots of OOOHs after trying on each pair. 

 

     On one of our first shoe shopping adventures we were looking for shoes for her brother when she discovered the pretty little sandals (see picture below).  I was so proud - she has great taste!  Who knew Jessica Simpson has a line for elementary school age girls??

 

     It  never ceases to amaze me that the red patent leather boots that are in the bottom of the dress-up bin always seem to appear at the most random times, that the newest shoes are the ones that get worn every day for about a week and boots are always appropriate because well they seems to go with everything when you're five (even in the summer).

 

     Enough said!