The Tale of Twinkle Toes

School shopping: thanks to our PTO we don't have to buy school supplies and the kids already have backpacks, so that left me just buying clothes. It was pretty easy . . . for the most part. Mom was out of commission so I had to drag Matt along. Honestly, clothes shopping is a two person task. I was given the responsibility of finding the clothes and Matt's job was to "encourage" Jeremy that they were "cool" enough. Bailee loved EVERYTHING I picked out so she was easy. Jeremy had to be convinced and INSISTED on trying everything on to see how it looked. He even wanted to try on his new underwear, but we convinced him that if we opened the package we would have to pay for it regardless of whether he liked them or not. After our excursion I was doing inventory on how many shirts and pants each child had and I noticed that Bailee did not have any new shoes. Fast forward to this past weekend. I thought it would be an easy up and back trip to pick up some shoes - boy was I WRONG!!
First store we went to I pick up several pairs of shoes: brown ones, black ones, with laces, without laces and Bailee turns her nose up at every pair. No problem, there are plenty more stores to check out. 2nd store: no takers. 3rd store: nothing she wanted. We finally make our way to sears and as we are approaching the shoes Bailee lets out a squeal and runs to the shoe department. As I approach her, I saw her holding THE most gaudy, awful shoes I have ever seen in my life. Here is how the conversation goes:
"MOM!! These!! I want these!! They are twinkle toe shoes mom! I want them!!"
"Uh, really?!? Look at these brown ones, they have a dangly thing on the laces. They look pretty cool."
"No mom! Those aren't twinkle toes! Look how beautiful these shoes are . . . they sparkle."
I was by myself. I had no backup, so I grabbed my phone and called mom. She looked at the picture I sent her and told me to find some that weren't AS bad.
I started to examine the shoes that she wanted, trying to find a fatal flaw in them. As I picked them up, they started to light up and Bailee squealed even louder saying those were the coolest shoes EVER!! Here is a picture of her beloved shoe:

Ah Hah!! I found the fatal flaw, so our conversation continues:
"Uh oh Bailee. Look! These have "peace signs" on them. We don't like peace signs."
"We don't?!? OK."
So we head to another store. Little did I know that there was an entire line of Twinkle Toe shoes. As we rounded the corner in Nordstrom there is a big sign that states "We have the ENTIRE collection of twinkle toe shoes!!" Bailee squeals and runs yet again and sees an entire wall of various twinkle toe shoes. I would say there were about 10 different styles and unfortunately ALL of them were in the price range that Bailee and I agreed upon before we left.
I start looking at the shoes for little girls, peace signs, skulls (yes skulls), swirls, flowers, hearts, guitars, and any other gaudy design you could possible imagine was on those shoes. All of the shoes that Bailee was looking at would totally clash with any outfit she wore. Unfortunately, she picked out some gold twinkle toes and here is what happened:
"Look mom!! Twinkle toes and there are no peace signs, skulls, or music stuff on them."
Through clenched teeth "Um, yup look at that. But wait! These shoes won't match any of your clothes. You want to match don't you?"
"Mom . . . . they're twinkle toes."
The shoe saleslady was eyeing me and she comes up. "It's your lucky day too, these are on sale!"
Bailee squealed again.
I looked at the saleslady and then over at Bailee and then back at the saleslady and said "Fine! Ring them up."
Bailee was dancing the entire way back to the car. She even told me that I can't throw away the box:

Who doesn't want a shoebox with a little girl holding a bunny!! Really!! A bunny!! I feel like a duped consumer. Here are the "beautiful" shoes Bailee insisted upon:

Yup, those are unicorns. At least they don't light up or have skulls or peace signs on them. Now some of you might ask why I didn't just say NO! Well, I learned my lesson with Jeremy and the brown shoes. I think he only wore them a couple of times. So after that little battle I told myself that I would only buy shoes that I knew my kids would wear everyday. Hence, the gold, jewel encrusted twinkle toes that Bailee is the proud owner of now:

I think I'm going to go lay down and be grateful I don't have go through that again until next year.