First Pair of Shoes

On December 20th, we took Harrison to the downtown Seattle Nordstroms to fit him for his first official pair of walking shoes. Nordstroms, being Nordstroms, makes a to-do of the momentous occasion which is why I chose to give them our hard earned cash. When we arrived, poor Harrison had already been awake through a morning of meeting Santa, checking out the Macy’s window display, his first ride ever on a carousel, lunch and his first experience eating french fries (the first truly solid food has ever accepted) – all of this needs to be documented on another post. Our babe was extremely tired yet sweet as we arrived on the 3rd floor kid’s shoes department. His whole body was limp and his eyes were practically rolling back in his head but we decided to take a risk and force him to stay awake and fit him for shoes.

The sales woman was surprised he was already walking at 10 months and when she measured his foot he came back at size 3.5. To give him room to grow we wanted a pair of 4’s in which they only had four styles in that size. Here is the pair we deemed worthy:

Harrison had by this time perked up and, wearing his new shoes, began walking around to test them out. I videoed the whole thing which isn’t exciting enough to post but the sales woman took a Polaroid photo, placed it in a little card with the date and a handwritten note. Harrison was then presented with a blue balloon and a stuffed “Nordy,” which is the Nordstroms kids’ mascot.

Just then, dear old dad remembered his Nordie and his experiences buying shoes there with his mom. Dad says, “mom always let me walk out of the store wearing my new shoes. It always made me happy.” Naturally, Harrison left the store sporting his new Stride Rites while mom and dad wondered why we didn’t check the price tag before agreeing to buy them. Ha!