Good parenting: putting shoes on your child.
Smart parenting: always keeping an extra pair of shoes in your car, because you know you’ll inevitably realize the baby (aka the four year old) isn’t wearing shoes when you’re unloading everyone out of the car for a chaotic Shake Shack dinner. (For what it’s worth, Shake Shack is very accommodating to shoeless people, if it ever comes to that. Don’t ask me how I know.)
It kind of doesn’t even matter what size shoes you keep on hand, to be honest; when in a moment of desperation, you will make it work. Everyone’s feet are magically the same size when you’re trying to get everyone into Target to buy two last-minute birthday gifts and emergency toilet paper on a summer Tuesday.
In our household, we just assume the baby will not have shoes on her feet, or anywhere in her general vicinity. That’s why I keep extra shoes in a lot of different places: my car, my husband’s car, other peoples’ houses, once I even asked Starbucks if I could store a pair behind their counter (kidding, but I wish I wasn’t, because that would’ve come in extremely handy on several occasions).
Moral of the story: if you have kids, but especially if you have a third kid, you need to stock your vehicle with footwear. There are entirely too many things to keep track of when trying to leave the house in a timely fashion with three children— keys, phone, purse, clothing for all parties involved, sports paraphernalia (because you will always be driving someone to a sports gathering, always), snacks, more snacks, nope that’s not enough snacks PACK MORE, did I mention snacks, 14 water bottles (the math doesn’t math, accept it and let it go), an impulsive late-night Amazon purchase you thought would make you feel alive but you’re returning to the UPS store, shoes for child number one, shoes for child number two, you get the picture. It’s clearly unreasonable to think the third child will also have shoes on, in the midst of all that chaos.
Keeping a pair (or three) of shoes in the car for your last child especially is something no one talks about enough, and I’m remedying that right now. If I had a penny for every time my husband or I, while driving to a nice outing with the kids, frantically uttered, “is the baby wearing shoes??” I would be paying someone to replace my creepy 1980’s jetted jacuzzi bathtub with a sleek clawfoot beauty right about now, among MANY MANY other things.
Case in point: I threw all three in the car today to go pick up our dog from the vet after her spaying appointment (and man, that “cone of shame” is really something). The “baby” traipsed through the vet lobby barefoot, petting and kissing all the sick dogs, while I halfway listened to our discharge orders and paid them a month’s worth of mortgage. (In another life, I want to come back as a vet. Who’s with me?) I said to the vet tech, a little too maniacally, “Whoops, forgot someone’s shoes! Oh well, I’ll give her a bath tonight!”
Editor’s note: Bath is TBD.