A few weeks ago, Jude came home from school asking for special tennis shoes that he somehow couldn’t quite describe. “I NEED them, Mom. I WANT them!”

After some amount of back and forth about the shoes, I finally figured out that the kid was asking for high tops. The preppy in me felt an immediate sense of horror as he described them as “the same shoes Justin Bieber wears.”

This is where my brain exploded.

WHAT? WHO!?! How does my baby know who Justin Bieber is? Then I remembered – some kid in his preschool class last year went to the Justin Bieber concert and all they could talk about for days was Bieber Fever. ((HOLD ME))

So, imagining that he will soon forget all about Justin Bieber and his unfortunate choice in footwear, I kinda moved past the topic. Until the next day when we went to the movies, and immediately afterwards I found myself being drug into the Journeys Kids store (translation: that skater-kid shoe shop in the mall) where he held up these little wunderkinds.

Look at his face. I mean, it’s like Holy High Tops happening right there.  It’s just a slippery slope to being Kanye West, you guys. Then he says, “Now text dad this photo so he can see them, too.” Uhh, ok.  Also, please note the most excellent choice of hairstyling that he did for himself that day. Personal style explosion happening all over that photo.

I tell Jude that I’m going to have to have a talk with Simon about the shoes since we just bought him new sneakers for school only a few months before. And then, every single day –from the absolute minute he woke up, to when I picked him up from school, til he went to bed at night — it was “When can I get some high tops? When can we go look at them? Have you and Dad talked about it yet?” In fact, he came into our bedroom one morning and whispers in my ear, “Have you and Dad discussed the high tops?” I said yes. “Can we wake Dad up right now so we can all talk about it together?”

The clincher for me, though, was when he drew his very own love letter ode to the high top shoe and taped it on the wall next to his bedroom. Complete with – in case you couldn’t tell – two red hearts above the high tops. Internet, I couldn’t take it anymore.

So, the two preppy parents took the child to the suburban mall, where we subjected ourselves to the teenage shoe salesman at the Journeys shop. At one particularly harrowing moment, Simon tried to roll up Jude’s pants so he could “get a better look at those shoes” and that’s when Jude snipped, “DAD! STOP! YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO IT!”

That’s when I fell over laughing because we have officially crossed over into Parenthood. It was basically like we had morphed into the frumpy parents from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Needless to say, the kid did get his high tops. And he hasn’t stopped showing them off for days now. He’s learning how to his personal style and we’re being stretched to allow him to do so.  But I absolutely draw the line at gold chains around his neck.  😉

This parenthood thing is a pretty sweet gig.