FEEL"INGS"

I have SO much to do! Really... I think I am going to have to take Spring semester off just to recuperate from all the work. I spent 4 hours straight on homework last night and I am not even close to being done. And that doesn't count the oodles of hours the day before and the day before.
I got the delightful pleasure of taking the boys shoe shopping the other night. James walked in and picked out a pair of shoes and we ordered it (because they never have the sizes we need in the store) within the first three minutes of being there. Seth on the other hand... well Seth is "special" when it comes to shoes and clothes and anything that FEELS a certain way on his skin (watches, goggles, hats, gloves, jackets.. etc..etc..)
I remember when little Sethie was a baby and he would just cry and scream when we put shoes on him. It made him so unhappy. Then when he was a toddler he would cry and scream every time it was time for a new pair of shoes. We would find his new shoes in the garbage and hidden under his pillow. Then he got a little older and still when it was time for a new pair of shoes I just cringed at the thought. It meant days and days of fighting his stubbornness. I would let him wear his old shoes until they were practically just a thin piece of rubber held on by some thread. It was pure torture getting him to wear new ones.
I started wondering if he was going to be that way forever or if he would grow out of it as he got older. Well, so far he has yet to show us that he can be grown up about buying a new pair of shoes. I've never seen such a baby when it comes to wearing a pair of brand new shoes. I'll have to take a picture of his shoes from last year. They have no padding left in them... you can actually touch the plastic backing which is exposed. They are TOTALLY trashed. Yet, he would prefer to wear them over a new pair any day.
Well , his goal was to get the same pair from last year, but they didn't carry it anymore which just broke the little guys heart. I was sad for him, but I was also knowledgeable enough to know that even if they did have them, when he tried them on for the first time he would be thinking that they weren't EXACTLY the same and the new pair was blah blah blah and blah blah blah. Yeah, we've tried buying the same shoe in four different sizes, so he could have the same shoe and just move to a bigger size. We thought it might help with the two weeks of TOTAL HECK that we have to go through with new shoes ... it doesn't work. "They just don't "feel" right." Which basically means that they haven't been broken into and totally trashed yet so they are not the SAME as his last pair that the sole is basically foldable by now.

Anyway we are in the store and there are a fair amount of shoes. Definitely enough that a 10 year old can find a pair to be content with. He walks around the store for over an hour picking out everything that is wrong with every shoe there. He doesn't even have to try most of them on to know that they are not the "right" shoe for him. Finally I give him three minutes before I pick out his new shoes. I find the ugliest pair of shoes in the store (totally 2nd grade... they even had LIGHTS in them) and tell him that I am ready to go up to the store and pay for them unless he finds something better before I get to the register. This puts him in panic mode, because there were like at least 40 pairs in the store that would be better than my ugly green flashing light shoes. He grabs a pair of $50 dollars shoes and shoves it at me. I always hope that the $50 dollar shoes will hold up better than the $30 dollar shoes. They never seem to, but I had been it the store for over an hour so $50 was starting to seem like a small price to pay to get to go home and go to bed. Plus it was buy one get one 1/2 of a Famous, so that might make them $40 instead of $50. WOW!!! I even had a $5 off coupon. I ordered Seth's shoes and we were done. Ordered meaning yet again they didn't have the size so that meant both pairs were going to have to be shipped to us.
Of course now that they are hear the "tongue" is to big for him and he isn't sure if he likes the color and they definitely don't feel "right". Monday morning is going to be so fun as I am trying to get ready for school and convince him to put his shoes on. I already know that it is going to be a FUN day. I am just hoping he doesn't try to cut the tongues off his shoes by then because I totally wouldn't put that past him.
Though Seth's biggest challenge in life is getting new shoes (and maybe our biggest challenge as his parents), he also has the "feel" gene that totally comes from Nate's side of the family... I'm 195% positive that it didn't come from my side!!! This has been evident as I pointed out from the time that he was very small. He wouldn't wear jeans until he was 5. He went everywhere in a baggy t-shirt and sweat pants. He also can't wear anything with a hole in it. There were four times at three different schools that I got calls from his teachers horrified that he had ripped his pants or shirt to pieces in front of the whole class. I would have to bring him new clothes and when I would get there he would usually be in his underwear (which thankfully never had hole in at the same time) or he would still have the elastic around his waist with some tattered shreds handing off it...in a room away from his innocent victims. His teachers always looked so apologetically at me... Like they were sorry they couldn't stop him from ruining his clothes... Or maybe they were just sorry for me? "What it isn't NORMAL for a three-six year old to just RIP off their clothes when they find hole is them??? None of the other kids in your class have EVER done that???" Hmmm. Glad I could give them a first. :-) lol
If he finds a hole in something he just doesn't take it off. He tears it off. Even now he just tore off a pair of jeans the other day (luckily now though he knows better than to do it in front of everyone... maybe I should just count my blessing eye. A hole to Seth is like a scab to someone else. Once he finds it he can't ignore it. He just picks at it and picks at it till it gets bigger and bigger and then when it is big enough..RIIIIIIIIIIIIP! The holes can be the size of a small seed, if it gives him something to work with and he can make it bigger his clothes are gone!
He is also picky about what he wears. He will wear pants (as long as they don't have a hole in them) as long as they still fit around the waist. With the adjustable waist pants that they have out now that means he can still fit into a size 6 even though he is ten. He is perfectly content doing so also! They look like little boy capris, which by the way, are so not IN. What makes me mad is that Nate is always whining about me having a problem with it. He is perfectly fine with Seth walking around like the Earkel boy. I think he is just happy that one of his kids actually wears out his clothes before he gets new ones, which save Nate money, which is what the world is all about. I finally just tossed all of his size 6's and size 8's. Got him some size 10's and tightened the waist so they felt like size 6's. He whined for the first week, but he actually looks like most the other 5th graders now.
Well, that is a little about my Sethie. He is usually the most easy going, loving child in the whole wide world. He just has a lot of special "feel" ings.