He's cute, but he's not wearing socks.
Kids love to take their socks off as soon as they figure out how to do this. Ronan has reached that stage and he is pretty damn proud of himself, judging by the wide smile he has every time he pulls one of them off.
Silly Daddy thought socks pricing would reflect the fact that they probably are short-lived. Silly Daddy had sticker shock recently when the family went to buy socks. Daddy was expecting $2 a pair, but instead was greeted with a choice of socks that were more than $4 a pair. Suddenly having organic cotton, chemical free socks seemed much less important if they were just going to end up living for eternity stuffed behind floorboards.
The socks fly off as soon as I stop riveting my attention to his every move. Usually, just to confound matters, only one of the pair is hidden deeply inside a pile of toys. We are quickly acquiring a pile of mismatched abandoned loners. I know something has happened when Ronan stands grinning at me. That probably means he’s either very happy, or very happy and has a cold foot. Sometimes the grin is accompanied by waving the sock in the air like he just doesn’t care, before it is thrown completely out of sight, where sock elves immediately descend and take possession of the sock and carry it into a magical world where parents can never venture.
Luckily we are moving into Spring, so unless Al Gore’s wrong, it should be getting warmer. So the sock issue is easily solved by just not wearing them, which Ronan seems to prefer. However, that solution does not work yet for going outside. For now we can prevent the sock’s escape by covering the foot with a shoe. I shudder to think how short a time that diversion will work; then we will be missing shoes as well as socks.
Last night Terry took Ronan to the coop, where, while shopping, Ronan either kicked off or took off his shoe. They were brand new, first time out shoes. Luckily for us, another shopper spied the errant shoe and gave it back to Terry. But it’s only a matter of time before we begin collecting a pile of mismatched and abandoned shoes to go with our pile of socks.
Perhaps all parents could agree to trade. We could put up a website where we could post photos of our mismatched shoes and socks and partner them up with other people who are missing the same article. Or we could just end the fashion requirement of matching shoes and socks (not that I follow that much anyway, even as an adult) and get a Fashion Avenue allowance for children to wear garishly mismatched shoes and socks. It could be a new trend.
I don’t know of any study of the amount of garbage that is actually lonely kid’s shoes and socks, but I imagine it’s a lot. There’s enough tennis shoes gone missing for people to throw some of theirs over telephone poles. What percentage of landfill is actually discarded shoes and socks because Mom and Dad can’t find the partner, which is off in elfin fairyland somewhere? I bet most parents reading this think it’s pretty high.
Soon after discarding his socks, Ronan discovered how to take off his pants. Right now this is reserved as the last expression of frustration, as in, Dad has only five minutes to shower, but Ronan wants to be picked up. When Dad comes out of the shower, Ronan is standing there, minus shoes, socks, and pants, with a giant grin on his face. He clearly expects to be rewarded for his accomplishment. It doesn’t matter that we have 30 minutes for the 45 minute subway ride to meet someone; he’s taken his clothes off, dammit, and that’s pretty cool. I imagine the first time his reaction was, “Hey! I just took my pants off! This is cool!” or something like that. Often he will take off his pants and then wave them around as if they are the pelt of some animal he’s just caught and skinned in a triumphal dance.
On second thought, I’m reading too much into it. He’s just excited to get semi-naked. The fact that I have to now redress him is of no concern. He now has control over his own clothes. That’s pretty cool when you’re one.