Doing better

Tonight we put thick socks on Ian, wrapped his feet in a piece of fleece, and attached strips of padded moleskin to the inside of various places of the shoes. We put them on at dinner and then went out to our favorite bookstore to distract him and wear the kids out before bed. Ian did awesome getting around in the shoes! He can balance alone, crawl up steps, walk with one hand held, and is close to walking with no support! It's funny to watch...he looks like those little green toy soldiers in the Toy Story movie. He's pretty good at maneuvering around objects too.

Later, as we came home and put him to bed, he complained about his shoes being on. I knew tonight he wasn't hurting, he just didn't want them on. So I tucked him in and told him a story about his feet and his special shoes. He smiled and closed his eyes and seemed to accept it.
He's not woken up since.
HURRAY!!

Not a good night

The Mitchell shoes came 3 days ago in the mail. We were impressed with some of the new changes, like the wider straps and the higher piece of rubber going up the back of the heel.
The first night, Ian let us put them on with no problem and only woke up once during the night. In the morning, we saw 2 red areas on his big toes and the area of the foot right below it...basically under the top buckle.
We let him go barefoot that morning and in a few hrs they had mostly cleared up.

The second night, Ian ran away from us when we said it was shoe time. As I gently led him downstairs he growled "I don't like mommy. I don't like daddy. I don't like Anna. I don't like Sam." (Sam's the cat). Despite his grumblings, he still let us put them on easily. In the morning, the spots by his toes were back, one of them was raw, and there were 2 red spots above the back of each heel.

Tonight he gave me a few kicks before I put them on. I cut pieces of the Duoderm that Ponseti had given us and placed them over his sore spots and put some thicker socks on him. He wore them for awhile before saying "My shoes are hurting me." He went to sleep easily but awoke about an hr later sobbing about his shoes hurting him. Nothing I did calmed him down. He was obviously in pain, so I took off the shoes and patches to check his feet. Sure enough, the red areas are redder and bigger.
So...leave them on, torture the kid, have worse sores in the morning, or take them off and let the spots heal up a little. Brad is out, so I made the reluctant yet executive desision to take them off.

We have some creative thinking to do tomorrow...we'll take ideas.