Clearly, I Should Be Drinking More Coffee

This morning, as per usual, I was running late. It was already 8:27 by the time I stuffed the wriggly young man's legs in his shorts and started putting on his socks and shoes, and we are supposed to be at Montessori by 8:30. While it is very close by, I have discovered, to my regret, that it is not so close that it makes the progress of time flow backward.

In any case, once shorts, socks, and shoes were on (and a shirt, too--LO's not a total rube), I started getting the young man's diaper bag together. Since he had been sitting reading Good Night Gorilla to himself when attacked by a sudden onslaught of sartorial necessities, I knew it would take him a minute or two to finish up his book and join me at the front door. As a lifelong reader, I know better than to interrupt a fellow reader when he is just getting to the exciting denoument of his book, so I did not attempt to hurry him, despite our lateness.

When he came mincing over to me (and really, that is the only word I can use to describe his forward locomotion across the living room), I realized belatedly that I must have put his shoes on the wrong feet. I invited him to have a seat on my lap and I began to take off his shoes. Looking closely, it was clear that the shoes were definitely shod on the correct feet. Assuming that perhaps the tongues of the shoes were bothering him, I took them both off and put them back on again anyway, in the hopes that I could get his poor little tootsies a little more comfortable. I also took a moment to tell him that shoes, like little boys, have tongues.

We got out the front door, and LO continued his strange, mincing walk. I started worrying that he might have grown out of his shoes overnight and began wondering if there was a way to take him to school without shoes.

Seated on the porch, with him on my lap for the third time in about five minutes, I finally looked at the child closely, instead of focusing on feet, book, tongue, etc.

Apparently, I had placed both of the child's legs in the same pant leg.

Doh!