week ending july 27, 2008:

Week ending July 27, 2008: An early post this week because we are leaving for our 4th week-long vacation this year. By now I’m sure the kids’ perspectives are totally skewed by all these vacations and next year they are going to wonder why we AREN’T going on 4 vacations! I try to emphasize to the kids that money is finite and that we can’t eat at restaurants every day or we wouldn’t have enough money for groceries and toys and clothes. We can’t buy toys every day or our house would get too full, and we can’t go on vacation every month. They still say things like “when are we going on a cruise again?” I tell them that the cruise was a very special one-time vacation that we probably won’t do again, but once they get jobs after college they can use their own money to go on cruises. Of course they don’t get it yet, but I keep trying. Sometimes I try harder than others. Alex fell in love with a pair of shoes in Sears. Well, actually, he fell in love with the box. On the box was a picture of a cartoon-like figure wearing the sneakers and there were jets of air coming out of the bottom of the sneakers. Alex called the sneakers “blast shoes” and insisted that they would make him fly. I explained that it would be irresponsible and unsafe for a manufacturer to sell shoes that would little boys fly, and anyway, we didn’t know if Alex’s own sneakers still fit since he’d been wearing crocs and sandals all summer. It turns out that Alex’s sneakers were too small, and although (after several days of arguing) I was able to convince Alex that the sneakers wouldn’t make people fly, he still wanted them. JC Penny’s had a great sale “buy one get one for $0.88” on the character sneakers that the kids loved last year, but Alex would not pick any shoes except for the “blast shoes” which weren’t available in his size. I checked on-line and I could get the shoes in his size with free shipping, but they were more than I wanted to spend. I caved and bought them anyway. They had to be shipped from California and Alex said he wished we lived in California so he’d get them faster. I said then we wouldn’t be able to see our friends and family. He said he wished they lived in California too (I love the 4-year-old’s perspective on stuff like this!). The shoes finally arrived, and thank goodness they were in the same box that we’d seen in Sears (the web site didn’t show the box). The shoes are actually called “Airators” by Skechers and they came with a comic book about a short kid who wants to play basketball and he becomes a super hero called Kewl Breeze when he puts on his Airators because they have an air bladder that squeezes cool air between his toes every time he steps. Alex was so happy with the shoes that he wanted to sleep with them on, but settled for sleeping with them on his night stand. Everywhere we went for a couple days Alex would tell sales clerks and random strangers about his Airators (no longer called “blast shoes”). Hopefully Alex is still as enamored with his Airators in a month when he goes back to preschool for orientation so he has something that he wants to show off to his classmates. I'll post a picture of him in the shoes soon.