Shoes - or not

Morgan just wants to be down ALL the time now, forget on public transport, it's everywhere. In town she insists on coming out of the carrier but she will absolutely not come the way we're going and she throws herself on the floor and screams with rage if I try to direct, lead, coerce or persuade her. If the reins go on she will throw herself around until I remove them - putting her back in the sling doesn't help, standing her up doesn't help, it's freedom or nothing.

I'm finding it really hard, and also really hard to not make a big deal about it. I'm very aware that I use the words stubborn, willful, determined, independant, about Morgan much more than about Jenna - and much more perhaps than I should do. She is all of those things, but in a normal quantity for a secure and happy baby with loving people around her all of her time. It's unfair for me to turn them into characteristics when they're just habits, if you see what I mean.

The other problem with her walking, apart from those outbursts at not being allowed to walk freely wherever she wants, is the matter of shoes. She has been walking confidently for long enough for her to get walking shoes, but nowhere makes them in her size (just below a 2). In fact, Clarks don't even make crawling shoes in her size. If they did I wouldn't buy the dratted things, I don't support the idea of selling shoes for babies who are best in socks in the first place. If they acknowledge, and they do, that shoes are harmful for babies whose feet have not had time to spread through unaided walking, then why do they sell the things? A case of, "not fit for purpose" if ever I saw one. Clarks' walking shoes start in a 4!

She is being protected when playing out of doors just by the little fabric booties and leather sockies (eg Starchild, Inch Blue, Robeez, Daisy Roots) that she has been in for a while. It's not ideal for concrete and so on but I want her to be fitted properly for appropriate shoes and that isn't an option until she starts to fit Startright's size 3.

I have worked out a big puzzle today. Jenna was waving a magnet around (yes I know, she's still allowed them) and she found that it stuck to the radiator as she did so. So she tried some other things, yes it sticks, no it doesn't, what about the TV? I stopped her just in time, reminded her what happened last time. But she seemed really not to have thought about it at all, she was just trying, in full experimental small child mode. Her brain wasn't clicked to finding an answer yet, she was still in the messing about stage. I'm sure of myself that if she had touched the TV she would have made some pretty patterns again AND NOT REALISED until it was too late that it wasn't a result she wanted.

I have to learn to assign positive intent a bit more. The more I watch her closely when we talk the more convinced I am that her reasonning is rarely like mine. Sometimes I expect her thinking to be too adult, because her behaviour can be and because she talks like a little adult a lot of the time. She came close to breaking the TV again (which slowly recovered from the first time) and we learnt more about each other than before, when I yelled and she cried.