She is her mother's daughter.

Kael growing up always grew feet first. Meaning his feet got bigger and bigger while his body slowly followed. At age 4, he wore size 11 shoes. I'm not sure how big that is compared to the rest of the world, but amongst his friends, that was pretty big.

Malia on the other hand always had little feet. It took her a long time to find Crocs that fit and even now, she can only wear the Mary Janes that she got for her birthday (and that's only because there's a strap on top). She fits other shoes but all the cool and neat shoes run in the larger sizes.

I am happy to say that she's now officially a size 5. She may even fit a 5.5 depending on the brand. Her shoe world has been cracked wide open.

Currently she's got a pair of Keens and the MJ Crocs that I know for certain fit her well. No sneakers and with the wacky weather lately, she needs some closed toed shoes to keep out the wet. We went to the Aquarium of the Pacific today and we made it just in time for the torrential downpour. Malia learned firsthand just how (un)comfortable wearing Crocs in the rain was. After her semi-nap, we went to Nordstrom's and got her sized, with the intention of me buying her a pair of shoes on-line for cheap. We'd try on some different brands at Nordie's to figure out a good fit so I wouldn't shop on-line blind.

That was the plan, anyway.

What happened was we tried on a bunch of shoes. Mostly Converses because nothing else out there appealed to me. I saw a couple that I liked and we were about to pack it up and head out. Then Malia saw it.

The "Mermaid Shoes."

Despite what you think, the shoes had nothing to do with Ariel or had any kind of overt marine theme. Her "Mermaid Shoes" (as she called them) looked like this:



OK, so the blue looks like the sea and I guess the pink can look like Ariel's hair, if you squint and look sideways. That's pretty much the only mermaid-y theme I can see. She loved them and Truong said just buy them for her. She wasn't going to let me take them off her and Dad being Dad, couldn't stand to see her disappointed. So I left the shoes on her and took the box to the counter. That's when I learned what the shoes were actually called.

The Tie-Dye Slip-On.

Sheesh. She's barely 2 and already she's leaning towards tie-dye.

Is this my child, or what? I'm so proud of her.