Tendow Howt

In preparing for my upcoming trip to Chicago to see Wicked, we have been listening to the Wicked soundtrack. A lot. And when we aren't listening to the soundtrack, we are singing, humming, whistling the tunes. Even when we are asleep. It's a bad, bad drug, I can't stop listening to it. I love the soundtrack which makes me all the more excited to see the show. My kids love it too. After hearing "Popular" once, Avee was prancing around the house chanting off-key, "Pop-you-low, pop-YOU-low" over and over.

Turns out Bo was secretly enchanted by the song as well and has at least half, if not more, of the song memorized. While he is singing along to a female part of a musical he maintains his masculinity by singing an entire octave lower than Galinda. I seriously can't get enough of listening to them.

I tried to splice, but it didn't go so well. But, whatever. Their cuteness is not compromised whatsoever. Just my techno-savvy-ness is.

I can't get the video to add properly, so I'm just posting this one for kicks. It's not the original one I spliced. Apparently I don't know how to splice. Whatever. I think that's a made up word anyway.

And another thing...

I have this thing about kids wearing their shoes on the "wrong" feet. I think it's perfectly okay. Often my kids will ask beforehand if their shoes are the right way and well tell them. Many other times, they throw their shoes on and don't care. My children love any kind of autonomy they are allowed. And putting on their shoes is something I love not having to do for them. Avee has been putting on her own shoes since she was about 16 months old. Mostly because she's obsessed with shoes.

Whenever someone tells me, as though I may not have noticed, "His shoes are on the wrong feet!" like I need to stop whatever I am doing and fix my son's shoes, I usually say, "Nope, those are his feet!" I want my kids to say that too, but they won't. They prefer to just stare blankly at people, sometimes throw in a lingering nose pick with the blank stare.

Well lately, Avee has been very into "dressing" herself. Usually she lets me dress her in a very cute outfit, carefully selected and coordinated, with matching hair clips. And then she'll throw a dowdy, tattered princess tutu thing over it and mismatched shoes. She goes to the Y like this. She went to the dentist like this. She goes everywhere like this, if she remembers to. So. The other day, I was taking my kids to the park and Avee, in all the excitement, forgot the tutu, but remembered the shoes. One is purple, the other is turquoise. Both are left shoes. J and I pointed out to here that they were not matching shoes and that since they were both left shoes, she might not be comfortable. She insisted, so we left the house with her wearing mismatched shoes. I didn't think of it again.

Until about 25 minutes after we got to the park. I coaxed Avee off of the swing onto some tubular bouncing thing. It was the last day of school here and there were a lot of school kids running around the park. One of them jumped up on the tubular bouncing thing with Avee. I was standing behind her, spotting her. The boy looked down at Avee's shoes and started sort of scoffing. I didn't think anything of it and Avee was oblivious. Then he tells her loudly, "Your shoes look funny, they aren't even the same!" In true Avee fashion, she giggles and says, "I know" as though the kid just said, "Your shoes are awesome, you are such a trendsetter, everyone wants to be like you!" Then he turns to me and says, "Why do her shoes look so dumb like that?" I fought the urge to roll my eyes and tell him to go find his mom, and I said, "That's just what she chooses to wear." He scoffed, "Well, she looks dumb." At that very moment, I glanced down at this 5-6 year old little boy's shoes. Bright pink Dora shoes. I just about fell over laughing. First in his face, and then right onto his pink Dora shoes.

Just kidding, I didn't really think the kid was rude. I just thought the irony was rich.