Every few days you'll find me digging under desks and sofas and beds, looking for escaped pacifiers. Today I rounded up five strays and presented them to our babysitter, "So many choices - take your pick!"When it comes to providing guaranteed chewing satisfaction though, there's only one choice. It's a certain curvy pacifier J can hold onto easily. He's so comfortable with it now that he'll grab its handle, pop it out of his mouth, then bite it again for a nibble or two before popping it out again. Give other babies a bear or a cuddly dog, this blue dudlik, or pacifier, is James' favorite toy. We have a double of it that we hang from his baby gym and he can spend minutes (that's hours for you and me) swatting at it while he chews on its twin.
If J's life is thorougly pacified, Caroline's is thoroughly shod. I recently made a count of her slippers* and realized that she has different sets for her kindergarten, music school, and swimming class. At home she has winter and summer slippers and a pair that one of her babysitters picked up in Japan because they would be cute in the bathroom. That's six. She also has playground shoes for school and another pair for home, sandals and winter boots. The other day she worried, with all seriousness, that she had no shoes to wear. It was raining and she'd grown out of her galoshes. A Central European to the core, C believes every situation demands a different shoe.
Luckily, look-alike crocs have landed with a splash in Prague and you can now find violently grape-scented purple "roks" for 49 crowns. That's a pricey beer, or half of an expensive coffee. This makes slipper shopping a breeze and I just have to remember to apply C's name in permanent marker across the toe (bubble letters please Mommie, she asked last time) before sending her off with a pair to her next destination.
* Here's a longer explanation about slipper culture in the Czech Republic.
8 comments:
Here in Germany those slippers are called Haus Schuhe. We're all about the slippers, too!
Caroline sounds like the next Imelda Marcos! Remember her?
C has been called little Imelda on several occasions! Her bag collection is even more immense, I'm afraid to say.
Zach our grandson is 2 years-plus and I notice his horribly politically incorrect dummy has all sorts of new technology built into it. The face plate is curved to fit his face in a more streamlined fashion, no doubt adding 2 - 3 kph during schüssen when he starts ski-ing. The plate is also slotted so that too tight a fit doesn't suffocate him. The sucky bit is flattened and angled downwards for reasons that are beyond me. I haven't checked out his shoes. Showing too much interest in shoes in my experience is likely to get one typed as a foot fetishist, an accusation I can do without for the moment.
A shoe and handbag obsessive, and I thought she was such an old fashioned little girl! Actually most kids are mad about shoes, socks too, I think. One of the priviliges of being a girl is you're not obliged to grow out of it. I didn't know you could get scented crocs...
Somehow all of Julian's "Nuggis" only end up in my purse, to accidentally fall out while desperately digging for a pen during a board meeting. One day I think I'll have to just offer it up as a peace offer...
These days it's toy trains we find all over the house. And the car. And the yard. But in between pacifiers and trains, it was sippy cups, which are particularly grody things to find, depending on what's been in them and for how long.
Leah had one pair of faux crocs that lasted a few weeks, and then she stepped on a roasted marshmallow. We never could quite remove it. They really ought to make holey rubber handbags to go with crocs, don't you think?
What I'm finding is that I have a huge collection of shoes that don't fit anymore but I can't bear to throw away! It used to be so easy to pop into Target and buy shoes at $9.99 a pair and not worry about the kids wearing them out. Priced here are a BIT more than that so I haven't bought any yet, but time is running out on that as there are so few to choose from on our shoe rack these days that fit...
BB, the flattened nibbly bit on a pacifier is apparently designed to be orthodontically correct, helping babies avoid an overbite in future years (or so the marketing material promises!).
I haven't decided if the scented crocs are meant to be that way or not, but they certainly popped out of the package smelling like artificial kool-aid. C was enamoured, me not so much.
I've pulled out pacifiers in business meetings too. A rattle once too ;-). Ah the professionalism!
A holey croc bag, I can totally imagine it. Sort of like a string bag for the beach, except made out of rubber?
Kelly, we find our playground and house shoes at the Vietnamese markets. Definitely the low price option in town, hence the great collection!
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