Yield to the Genes

I realized yesterday that I have rebel blood in me. I've also come to realize that Maya has high-heel-wearing blood in her. And sometimes you just can't fight genetics. Anyone who's visited China knows that high heels are the footwear of choice for all fashion-conscious ladies. Maya would see absolutely nothing wrong with this woman's attire while trekking the Great Wall of China:



Maya calls all high heels "tap shoes". I think when we bought her that first fateful pair of squeaky shoes in China she came away with the mistaken impression that shoes should be noisy. They should also be obnoxious and totally impractical. Over the summer she gave her sensible-shoe-wearing cousin Tacy a hug while sporting interesting footwear of her own.



At one point she decided that flip flops were a must-have. I personally thought flip flops were a little silly for an active toddler, but I relented. I'm not a total fuddy-duddy and I envisioned something girly with a splash of pink, but decidedly sporty. This is what I had in mind:




Maya, however was drawn like a magnet to this:




Could you find a more obnoxious shoe? And they light up. She often moves my practical, sturdy, low-heeled leather shoes from their spot by the door and replaces them with the highest heels she can find. She's waiting patiently for the day when she sees her mom in high heels and jeans. She'll be waiting a long time. Right now though Maya is all about her older sister's way-too-big tap shoes.



She puts them on right when she gets out of bed and taps her way around the house until I take them off her feet at night. She goes to a Montessori preschool in the mornings and it's always a struggle to get her into the footwear requested by her school: rubber rain boots. Maya hates them. I even bought her stylish rain boots, but she still hates them. Invariably she changes into the tap shoes at the last minute and tries to sneak out to the car. Maya will attest to the fact that sneaking is hard to do in tap shoes and so she's repeatedly forced to abandon the shoes that get noticed for the ones that merely keep her feet dry while playing in puddles. Life is so unfair.