Little Slippers

Christmas was good. Joseph got more presents than he knew what to do with - more than we knew what to do with - and couldn't work out how to unwrap any of them.
We ate too much, were generally lazy and enjoyed the season. Isn't it all about "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall all have indigestion and significant weight gain." Or something like that!
We've also taken full advantage of the January sales. There's quite a bit of reduced kids stuff out there and there are even one or two gems to be found for little boys. Alas the vast majority of children's clothing in the sale rails are for girls aged 0-6 months or girls aged 2+. It's all pink and frilly and nasty and what little there is for boys is often damaged and you have to fight for it with at least three other women. Now Joseph, those little trousers were worth nearly getting charged for assault, you look very cute in them.
We also bought him a pair of slippers.
Andy is paranoid that Joseph will somehow always be too cold. I've always been less worried, our house is pretty warm and he always wears socks. Still, they were cheap and cute and had two of the characters from Chuggington on them.
Well, how could we resist?
They have some drawbacks. We bought a size 4, which are a little big, but he'll grow into them. They have velcro fasteners on them which he loves. Perhaps I should be a little bit more specific on that - he loves undoing them. Inevitably he ends up wearing only one slipper and we have to hunt for the lost one.
You know, that sounds like a Victorian parlour game - "Hunt the Slipper".
The velcro straps are very sticky, they are good quality velcro. The problem is that they do like to stick to other things apart from the other side of the strap. Josephs play mat is quite a good surface, being loop pile fibre. Yesterday, my little boy was sitting down and the velcro of his one remaining shoe stuck fast to the mat. He got up and began his seamans roll style gait across the floor, only to find himself encumbered with an unexpected weight.
The corner of the play mat was stuck fast and was following. The play mat was slowly peeling up off the floor and Joseph was unwittingly managing to fold the thing in half. Goodness knows what sort of a mess he'd have made of it if I hadn't seen it when I did, but I did rescue him. After I'd spent a little while laughing of course.
His walking is generally improving. He can get up quite a bit of speed now, but he's not yet confident enough to try and run. He can walk a very long way if you hold his hand and on 2nd January we took him to a local park and he did indeed walk a long way and got rather muddy in the process. His little shoes were quite caked but they're well enough made that the large lumps of raw nature clinging to them hadn't stopped the little flashy lights working.
He could probably walk a long way without any assistance, but he does lack confidence and a little stumble inside is bad enough, but outside he'd get quite mucky and I'm not ready to deal with that yet.