Wednesday afternoon, I loaded up the kids (minus Noah who was on a play date) and headed out to the shoe store. Nicholas had outgrown his regular shoes, again, and Sarah had also outgrown her Sunday shoes. There are several shoe stores in the next town, but we drove a bit further to our favorite one. Not because of the fantastic selection, although that is pretty good. No, it’s our favorite because of the awesome play equipment in the middle of the children’s shoe department.
It’s a self-contained plastic jungle gym; complete with slide, fun crawling spaces, and a ball pit. The girls took off their shoes, as per the posted rules, and got right down to playing, while Nick and I went to look for shoes to fit his giant feet. He is now officially a size 46, which is a men’s 12 1/2 for you American readers. Crazy! And no such luck borrowing Dad’s many shoes, since he is only a size 43. Surely, they can’t get much bigger, right? They have to have reached their limit, I hope. Now it’s time for the rest of his body to start playing catch up!
Anyway, after we had found some shoes he liked, we went back to the play area, and I took Sarah around the store to find some pretty Sunday shoes. Unfortunately, the ones she liked didn’t fit her narrow heel. We tried on a few others, the saleslady even went to the stockroom, trying to find us different sizes, but nothing fit. She said they would be getting new stock in a few weeks and try again then. Sorry, Sarah.
Anyway, that all took a while, so the waiting kids naturally had to come up with something ridiculous to keep them entertained. Nicholas decided it would be fun to take off Alexandra’s socks, hide them in the ball pit, and then look for them. Like digging for buried treasure! In theory, sure, a fun way to pass the time. In actuality, a perfect way to lose your sister’s socks!
By the time Sarah and I came back to the play area, he had already been searching for quite a while. He had found one sock, but the other was still lost somewhere down in the depths. Nick was trying to systematically search every part of the pit, going from one corner to the next, digging down deep to the very bottom and searching everywhere his hands could feel. Hindering this process, however, was the fact that Nick is pretty much as big as the whole ball pit, it being designed for much younger children. So then we tried having him scoop the balls out of the pit and put them on the nearby ledge. But this was less than successful due to the fact that the balls were, well balls, and therefore perfectly round and rolly. They just kept falling right back into the pit!
At first I thought it was pretty funny, but as the search kept going on and on and on, I started to get a bit frustrated. We still had to buy two birthday presents, drive all the way home, and pick up Noah’s at his friend’s house and get him to swimming lessons on time in a totally different town. So I called in the big guns. I ordered Nick out of the ball pit, and asked Sophie to please go in and look for her sister’s sock. Sophie is THE finder of things in our house. She seriously has magical powers when it comes to locating precious lost objects of any size.
And sure enough, after about 2.3 seconds, she held up the found sock in victory, with a big grin on her face. We all cheered and clapped and praised her skills, while Nick sputtered in the background “I helped her. I helped her. I must have pushed it to the top looking for it!” Um, yeah, sure, whatever you say, buddy.
And the lesson we have learned is, never drop anything into the ball pit you want to actually see again!