Gotta Be the Shoes

Yesterday, Reagan, my 14-month-old daughter awoke from her morning nap in a great mood. She allowed my to change her diaper without incident, which is an occasion for celebration – she usually puts up quite a fight, wriggling, contorting and screaming and kicking and reaching for the poop filled diaper. I can an be very taxing on the nerves.
But not this day. Today was a good day. No fits, no flipping over, no kicking. A quick, clean diaper change. It was going great.
Naturally, was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Literally, as I was putting her little sneakers on, I thought, “I have get this done quickly, before her good mood deteriorates and I get kicked in the face again.”
And I did. She was as sweet as pie. She let me get her sneakers on, good and tight too. She’s been kicking them off, unless I take extra care to triple-strap them on her chunky little piggies.
I carry her downstairs to her chair and we have lunch. A good lunch. No crying. No tantrums. Nice meal. Bother, sister and Dad.
After lunch, we go out in the newly-fenced in backyard to run around for a while and enjoy the weather. After a few moments of cavorting, and running and falling and walking and running and general mayhem outside, Reagan begins to cry. Hard cries. Not the whinny “I want….I need…” kind of cry. The I am in pain kind of cry.
Ever alert to my baby crying. I spring into action and pick her up. She stops crying for a moment. And she quickly starts up again. Cries and screams and real tears -- something is really bothering her.
Lunch? Maybe lunch is sitting wrong in her tummy. I begin to rub. Cries get worse. Gas. Maybe she has gas. This too shall pass. Cries continue to escalate. Face red, teeth bared cries. Maybe she ate something she shouldn’t have outside, a rock or a piece of plastic, or a coin. The night before, her brother told us that she has just eaten a penny. Mom and I were a bit skeptical. But she does like to eat everything – mulch, rocks, grass, sometimes she even eats stuff she’s supposed to eat. Maybe her stomach is bothering her because of something she ate.
OK. Let’s sit down in the den and relax. First, we’ll stop the crying and get everybody breathing normally. We’ll go inside and watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse that generally relaxes Reagan and changes her mind. So I shepherd the two kids and the dog back inside the house and we sit down and watch Mickey. Reagan is still crying her eyes out.
Nothing is working. A quick check of the Daddy Handbook I keep in my head says; “Try to make the child as comfortable as possible. Take off shoes.” As the show starts, I begin to take her sneakers off.
At this point Mickey seems to be working his charms, Reagan is calming down. At the same time, I realize that she had her shoes on the wrong feet. In my haste to get her shoes on as quickly as possible to keep the happy vibes going, I put her shoes on the wrong feet.
Now, if you are a cynic, you are saying to yourself, “that’s why the baby stopped crying. Her shoes were hurting her because they were on the wrong feet – and triple strapped on -- and you took them off.”
However, being the optimist that I am. I like to think that the soothing qualities of Mickey Mouse were the reason that the baby stopped crying and the shoes had nothing to do with it. How bad could a shoe hurt? Mickey Mouse is magical. He does live in the Magic Kingdom. Definitely, not the shoes.