Bad Mommy

Louis taking a walk in his new shoes

And showing me the kind of shoe he wished I'd bought

Seeing as Bad Mommy Confessions are all the rage - heck people even manage to get New York Times bestsellers out of the stuff - I thought it was time to get in on the action. So, the other Sunday, when I was reunited with Louis after surviving another week of work, I was getting him dressed when I spotted that his feet were no longer the feet of a baby. Gone were the milky white, super soft feet of an innocent, in their place, the reddish roughened, blistered feet of a little boy.

Hang on, did I say 'blistered'? Yup, that's right. Little Louis' toes were covered in blisters. Which could mean only one thing: his shoes were too small. Sure, when the John Lewis lady told me his then new shoes might only last a couple of months I was listening. And I had tried to check occasionally to see if he still had any toe wriggle room. But clearly I hadn't tried hard enough because there was only one way Louis' toes could be that blistered. They must have spent days squidged into shoes that were too small. Whoops. (I'm tempted to point out in my defence that I hadn't been with him for the past three days but I doubt that's in keeping with a Bad Mom Confession.) 

Boy did I feel bad about it. Not least because letting his shoes get so small totally defeated the point of going to such agonising lengths to buy his special shoes in the first place. But most of all I was just annoyed it meant another trip to John Lewis, my bete noire. Punishment indeed. Louis was in heaven shoe shopping though. Although his choices presented me with a dilemma: what to do when your little boy picks out the pinkest, sparkliest shoes in the shop? Repeatedly. We stuck with the boring blue ones, for now. But would it be so bad to let him wear pink? Or would that really turn me into a Bad Mom?