Toby's New Shoes

Toby's got a few new tricks under his belt.  The first is the snarl.  I think its a way to show off his teeth but it could be his way of doing upper lip yoga.  Basically he curls his upper lip upwards while protruding his upper jaw and smiling at the same time.  Its usually accompanied by a bout of heavy nasal breathing and eye squinting.  If it were October right now I'd start making the pirate costume (oh, who am I kidding...I'd put it on my list of things to buy next time I'm at Walmart...)  IT may seem slightly grotesque but its the face he does to show us that he's AMUSED or HAPPY.

TOnight it was extra funny, though because his SECOND new trick is wearing shoes.  Sandals, in particular.  Rob and I realized that Toby has never WALKED in shoes before (he has worn them to be cute - -but not to be practical) and the last time we put on his boots he sat in a giant heap of self defeat and cried when he realized that his newly found limber feet were gone.  So today we put him in sandals.

For some reason he was naked at the time - -a combination of end of the day unwillingness to fight the "life isn't that bad I"m just trying to put your diaper back on" fight and the fact that he had tomatoes for lunch which gives him an angry looking bum.  Which merely justified the former.  But nonetheless my naked little boy was walking around naked when he noticed me clipping the tags off of his new birthday sandals.  And of COURSE, he wanted to know exactly WHAT they were and HOW they worked.

SO I put them on his feet.  And he LOVED them.

DESPITE the fact that they slipped a little on the hardwood floors-  that was OK with him -- he just walked faster.

And DESPITE the fact that they were too big for him and made a clunking sound -- that was just NEAT. So he walked HARDER to make even LOUDER clunks.

And of course, to prove it to us just how GREAT these new things were, he decided to move around the house at lightening pace, slipping and sliding and banging his feet LOUDLY on the ground while making his new pirate snarl face at us.

Thanks, Aunt Kryssie- - we like the sandals.