Shoes! Go!

To properly develop their feet and learn to walk toddlers should be barefoot as much as possible. If you’ve ever watched a toddler walk in shoes with stiff soles, or even ones that claim to be flexible, you’ve seen that they look as awkward as when you first put shoes on a dog. Because dogs are also made to go barefoot.

So at home Iddo goes barefoot. We tried socks most days last winter when she wasn’t even crawling to help keep her feet warm but turns out she thinks socks are for chewing on and so they didn’t last long each day.

When she started cruising and walking though, we realized while barefoot is best, barefoot outside might not be the best idea. We needed shoes that would still let her feel the ground under her as much as possible but protect her from that same ground while she was learning to walk.

Back in May we bought her a pair of Momo Soft Sole Leather Shoes. They are all leather with a suede sole. They are one of the few baby shoes accepted by the American Podiatric Medical Association. Even with her penchant for pulling off socks she’s never managed to pull them off. They protect her feet. She doesn’t look like a boot-wearing dog when she walks in them. And they are cute!

She loves them. She learned the word “shoes” very quickly, especially because when we got out her shoes it meant we were going outside. As she was learning to walk holding on to our fingers she dragged her toes a lot and a couple of weeks ago we noticed she’s actually worn through the leather at the toes. Her feet have gotten bigger and these shoes have seen a lot of little toddler sized miles.

She’s recently started saying “Go!” a lot. She loves to go. And she puts such a cute emphasis on the O sound that we love to let her go as well. But she needed new shoes to go around in. She’s still figuring out the ground beneath her so we bought her another set of soft soled shoes, this time an adorable T-strap version and one size bigger.

I’m excited to see where she goes to next. 😀