Fetish

JJ loves shoes.

If we walk past a shoe shop, within the 2 seconds that I realise she’s no longer walking next to me, she’s popped down on her bottom, taken off both shoes and socks, and is trying on the pair of heels from the the window display. (It’s amazing how well she can walk in heels!)

Likewise, if we visit a friend and they have shoes next to their front door, it can takes us a while to progress beyond that point. One of my friends has 3 boys, and she laughed when JJ started walking around in her shoes. None of her boys had put on her shoes even once, and JJ had taken that liberty within the first minute of arrival.

JJ walks around in my flats at least half a dozen times a day. She’s named some of them. A silver pair are “Justine’s shoes” and an orange pair are “Essie’s shoes”. (Justine and Essie are both Playschool TV presenters.) When she’s wearing them she will incorporate role-playing into whatever she is playing with at the time. For instance, if she’s playing with play dough she’ll say “I be Essie. Daddy, you be Andrew. Andrew, what you like?” And Mr Banya will reply with something like “Oh, I’d like a car please Essie”. And then JJ will say “Oh OK, OK Andrew” and start making a car. This scenario, with lots of little variations, has been happening for months, many times a day, every single day.

“Justine’s Shoes”

JJ also likes to sit on our bed and play shoe shop with Mr Banya. It’s a special game between the two of them. Basically she pretends to be a shoe shop owner and she’ll ask Mr Banya what shoes he wants to buy, and he’ll reply describing a type of shoe. Then they’ll switch roles. One day, she started calling him “Shoe Shop”, and she continued calling him by this name for hours. Mr Banya and I joked that it’s not far off calling him “Credit Card” – maybe that one’s still to come. 🙂

Yesterday JJ woke from nap, having just had a dream. She asked “Daddy. Is Mummy your wife?” “Yes” replied Mr Banya. “Daddy, does Mummy sell shoes?” asked JJ. “No, but we can pretend she does if you want to” replied Mr Banya. Then JJ said “One day, I’ll sell shoes just like my Mummy.” Awwww.

Two sizes of the beloved purple shoes

We bought her a pair of good purple shoes a few months ago. For months, she used to introduce herself to people saying “I’ve got purple shoes!”. No joke. She would say this to someone every other day. Of course, I always get asked “Oh, are they new?”. I’d say “No, they’re almost outgrown. But yes, she loves shoes. And yes, she loves the colour purple.” Since she liked them so much, I bought her the next size up as well, which she’s just started fitting. And sure enough, the “I’ve got purple shoes” statement is again getting a good workout.

She found a pair of sparkly pink size 2 babies shoes in Bee’s drawers a few weeks ago. They were hand-me-downs, I don’t think JJ ever wore them as a baby, but now she’s taken a liking to them. She squeezes her feet in them and says that she’s wearing her dancing shoes. Ten minutes later, she starts complain that her feet are hurting. No wonder, she’s currently around a size 6.5, squeezing into a size 2! After a few bouts of asking her not to wear them versus her tantruming when I took them away, we popped up to the shops to buy some new “dancing shoes”. She chose a cute little pair of quite sturdy shoes covered in tiny violets, and calls them her “ballet shoes”. She puts down an old poster for a stage and does the cutest little wiggly dancing moves. She dances around in them on her tippy-toes and practises twirling. Luckily they don’t look like ballet shoes at all – so are still practical enough for her to run and climb.

How cute are these shoes that Bee received as a gift from one of our neighbours. JJ adores them. Sometimes I find her waking Bee up (argh) so that she can put these shoes on her.

So, I think I can fairly say we have a shoe fetish going on in our household….