I made it through the weekend without killing anyone or breaking anything! Yah for me!

Actually this weekend wasn’t too bad, considering how horrible the one before was—and let’s just say it was horrible enough that I could not write about it without risking a horrible divorce and ruining more that a few lives in the process. But this weekend, on the other hand, was fairly decent.

Saturday morning I had to trek out to the shoe store to find Muppet some new shoes. I had to find him shoes because the last pair were no longer serviceable. He ever so slightly ripped the soles off them. And he’d done it often enough that the glue holding the glue holding the glue wasn’t going to hold any more glue, much less the sole.

We’d lucked into those shoes at the time. I was shoe shopping with Marc, a task to be avoided at all costs because we have very different ways of seeing the world, especially if the spending of his hard earned cash is involved. (His cash, his right to bitch, right? Well, sometimes at least.) Finding shoes that we both agree on, at the price we both agree on, in the style/color/other ‘gay’ stuff that we agree on is usually a very difficult, often impossible task. It’s better to shoe shop alone and then listen to his grumbling afterwards. But this is not always practical when one has two screaming monkeys in tow and another baking in the oven. Sometimes Mom needs Pop’s grumpy, bitchy, whiny help.

So the last time we went to find shoes for Muppet was an ordeal. And just when we were both on the verge of tossing in the towel and screaming ‘Get thee gone, schmuck’ at each other, I stumbled across the perfect pair of shoes on the clearance rack. Marc immediately tried them on the Muppet while singing the praises of his wonderful Mama who’d just found these wonderful shoes. (Note: wonderful in Marc’s dictionary of terms means cheap.) Baby was happy, Mama was happy, and even better, Papa was not a grumpy old hag.

Fast forward a couple of months. Those shoes have been well worn and well used, and honestly, I can still say, with all the hell Muppet puts his feet through during any given day, we got what we paid for. They were not the highest quality shoes, and yes, Marc ended up gluing the soles back on more than once. So enough was enough.

Shoe shopping with two monkeys on a Saturday morning in France (even rural France) is not an enterprise to be entered into lightly. One needs reinforcements. Sadly, reinforced restraints are frowned upon here as I imagine they are in the States. And while it doesn’t really bother me if my children should happen, one day, to experiment in bondage, I’d rather they save those experiments for when they’re a bit beyond the Toddler Stage in life. Color me old-fashioned, but I don’t feel like paying for therapy for that when they’re teens. So instead of leather ties and Velcro, I opted for reinforcements of the human kind, notably in the form of one Tata Véro, the Evil sister-in-law (who is 180° from evil, really—and single and looking should any of you guys have a prospective Evil brother-in-law in mind for Marc).

And a good thing she came along, too. After finding a good pair of shoes for Monkey (that match a majority of his clothes, are stylish, and don’t seem like the kind that will fall apart after three hours—my criteria, and that are reasonably priced, are reasonably priced, and are reasonably priced—Marc’s criteria), said Monkey decided to take off on a solo flight around the store. Gah!

Fortunately the place wasn’t crowded—apparently we country folks are more afternoon shoppers than morning ones—so I wasn’t too worried about loosing him in the sea of people. But he is fast, and he’s little so it’s easy for him to disappear quickly. And because he’s so little, I was searching for him in low areas, like on the floor. Fortunately Tata Véro was there to save the day, and the Monkey, from certain doom.

See, Monkey wasn’t on the ground. Monkey was sitting astride an empty display counter pretending to ride a horse. He was ABOVE eye-level, in a place I would never have thought to look. And considering his complete and total lack of verbal response to my calling his name, I was practically right beside him when Véro pointed him out to me. I never would have found him—and he thought this was all jolly good fun. Little booger!

But he’s shoed, and we managed to do the rest of my shopping and Véro’s one errand all before lunch. A great start to a weekend, n’est-ce pas?

I learned something shoe shopping this weekend. My kids, they have big feet. Pooplette, who I already know is tall for her age, is going to be monstrous if, like a puppy, she grows into her feet. There was a little girl a little younger than Muppet shopping for shoes in the same aisle as we were who wears one size larger than our little girl. A year and a half older and she has almost the same size feet as our little girl? The scariest part of all of this is that if Pooplette decides to live her adult life in France, and her feet continue to grow at this exponential rate, she’ll be doomed to shopping in shoe stores for transvestites. And let’s face it, while the TV community usually has impeccable taste and a certain sense of style that is beyond compare, I doubt seriously Pooplette would be willing to shoe herself in platform heels and go-go boots for all her adult life. Especially if she’s already Very Tall.

But she’s not the only one with potential foot covering problems. Her brother, too, seems to have huge paws. See, Sunday Marc’s aunt stopped in with her grandson for a surprise visit. The grandson, Muppet’s 2nd cousin, is two years his senior, stands a good six or seven centimeters taller than Muppet, and in all likelihood will be a tall fellow himself. Marc’s cousin is taller than your average French chick and her significant other is tall, even by Scandinavian standards—he’s 2.07 meters tall (or something like 6’10). The kid’s got a pretty good chance of being tall, and for his age he already is. But, the little monkey wears the same size shoes as our monkey—and he’s two years older.

Is there some parenting fact that I don’t know about where kids’ feet stop growing for a while? Or are we doomed to forever having a hard time finding shoes?

Saturday night was pizza night with Tata and another old friend. Pooplette and I stayed behind while the others, Monkey 1 included (because it’s like his totally favorite activity) went out in search of pizza. I’m truly sad I missed this excursion, happy as I was to have a bit of a lie down, or as much of a lie down as one can muster while cleaning off (read as digging out) the table and feeding a toddler. Muppet’s a character. And I’m sure if my dad were still around to take credit for his personality, he’d do so with pride.

Muppet walks into the pizzeria with the rest of the crew, like any normal kid, and it went a little something like this (and yes, I’ve translated so you evil birches won’t jump in my shit again):

Muppet: Heeeey ladies!

Lady behind the counter: Good evening.

Muppet: Are you listening to me, woman? I want a pizza. Give me a pizza….please.

OK, having typed that I can see how it looses something, but you’ve got to see this kid. He’s all personality. He cracks us up daily. And he’s teaching his sister all his tricks.

We’re doomed.