Notes: Thanks to Mari and Sammy for the squeal-inducing feedback. You're the best, ladies! Thanks to Mari for the title!
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Hope you enjoy!
Knotted (A McRoll in the REAL World Story)
"Come on, Angie, we're late. Why don't you just wear your sandals, baby girl? I'll work on this knot tonight, I promise," Catherine said, giving up on the massive knot in one of Angie's tennis shoes which made it impossible to even slip on as they'd learned the hard way.
"I wan' to wear dis ones!" Angie insisted from her seat on the bottom stair, holding up her foot which had on the other shoe in the pair.
"That's only one shoe, honey. You can't walk around the capitol with just one shoe. I don't want you to step on something and hurt your foot."
"Dis ones!" Angie repeated, shaking her foot.
Catherine sighed. Steve had already left with DJ to drop him off at school on his way to HQ, and she had a meeting first thing.
She held up the sandals, dangling them enticingly in front of her recalcitrant daughter. "These are the sandals Grandma got you because you outgrew your other ones."
Angie shook her head. "No sandals."
"What about your Crocs?" Catherine tried again, pointing to the bright yellow slip ons. "They match your butterfly shirt."
Angie continued to shake her head.
"Angie, we really need to go, Mommy has a meeting."
"Wif Senator Pearl?" Angie asked, knowing Catherine often had meetings with the influential senator.
"No, not with Senator Pearl, but it is an important meeting, and now you're changing the subject. Shoes. Sandals or Crocs, pick one."
Angie frowned. "I wear my boots like Daddy," she said, starting to stand to go get them.
Catherine sighed. "Your combat boots are at Grandma and Grandpa's and we don't have time to drive over and pick them up. These are your choices," she reiterated, motioning with the shoes in her hands.
Angie pursed her lips, looking at them. Finally she took the sandal and slipped it on her foot. "Le's go," she said, standing.
"Wait, let's take your tennis shoe off so you can put on your other sandal," Catherine said, reaching for the shoe.
"No!" Angie screeched, dodging out of the way.
Catherine rubbed her head. Angie could be stubborn, but she wasn't normally this unbiddable. Glancing at her watch, she groaned. "Okay, fine, one tennis shoe and one sandal it is. Technically you do have something on both feet," she said standing. She slipped the other sandal into Angie's backpack before zipping it up in the hopes she or someone else would be able to cajole the almost four-year-old into changing later.
Picking up her own bag, she opened the door and turned around to see Angie removing the sandal and putting it under the stairway. Catherine quirked an eyebrow as Angie looked up, caught.
"I hiding it," she explained matter-of-factly.
Catherine let out a reluctant and exasperated laugh and stepped over to pick her and the sandal up. "Is this gonna be a new thing?" she asked, heading for the door. "Because if it is, you are gonna have to do better than that, baby girl."
"Can you grab a bag of rice?" Catherine asked Steve as they stood by the island cutting up vegetables for a stir fry for dinner. "We can get that going, too."
"Sure," he replied, walking over to the pantry. He emerged with the bag of rice and one of Angie's Crocs. "How did this get in here?"
"Where was it?"
"Behind the rice."
Catherine groaned. "Angie. She must be hiding them. I told you we had a little struggle over her shoes this morning?"
He nodded, setting the Croc by the kitchen doorway and moving to the stove to start the rice.
"She never did agree to put on her other sandal despite me, Carmen, Cody, and even Lea trying, and after we got home, Cammie found one under our bed. I thought maybe Angie had kicked it off when we were up there changing and it ended up under there, but now I'm thinking that was another 'hiding spot.' "
"And you said she tried to hide her sandal under the stairs this morning, so I guess this is a new phase."
"Yeah, I'm not sure what it's about," she said, setting down the knife. "She just kept saying she wanted to wear her tennis shoes, but not why."
"They're newer 'cause she outgrew her old ones, maybe that's it?" he suggested.
She pursed her lips. "I don't know, her sandals are new, too …" She sighed. "I don't know. Might just be her way of asserting her independence."
He half-smiled, half-grimaced. "Almost four going on almost fourteen?"
She chuckled. "Something like that."
After dinner, Catherine and Angie spent some time in the playroom while Steve helped DJ with his homework. Catherine came into the living room just as Steve was coming downstairs.
"All done," he reported. "DJ's just putting his stuff away."
Catherine smiled, nodding. She motioned back toward the playroom where Angie had remained after they cleaned up their block city. "We had a little shoe talk," she said.
He quirked an eyebrow in question. "Oh yeah?"
"About how she's very fortunate to have more than one pair of shoes to wear."
"How'd that go?" he asked.
"She offered to give her sandals and Crocs to other kids."
He inhaled, wincing. "I guess we can't really fault that impulse."
"No …"
DJ appeared at the top of the landing. "Mommy, why is Angie's sandal in the bathtub?"
Catherine sighed. "Because she's hiding them. Can you grab it for me, honey?"
"Okay," DJ said, disappearing momentarily. He came downstairs and gave it to her. "It was in the basket with the bath toys."
"Of course it was," Catherine said, glancing at Steve.
"At least she's getting better at hiding them," he observed, nodding at the aquamarine sandal. "It kinda blends in with the bath toys," he added, unable to hide the approval in his voice.
Catherine gave him a look but couldn't deny the point. She went to put the sandal with the other shoes by the door and realized the other one was now gone. She sighed. "That still doesn't make a matching pair of anything other than her tennis shoes." Groaning, she picked up a tennis shoe. "And look at this. I got the first knot untied and now she's got a knot in the other one."
As Steve joined her to look at the new knot, DJ's brow furrowed thoughtfully. Without a word, he headed for the playroom and his sister.
A little later, Catherine and Steve approached the playroom determined to get to the bottom of Angie's aversion to anything but her tennis shoes. They stopped outside the doorway when they heard the conversation inside.
"You make a loop with each shoelace," DJ was saying. "Then you wrap one around the other, like this, and pull it through."
"Do it again, please, DJ," Angie said.
Catherine and Steve peeked around the doorframe to see Angie and DJ sitting on the floor facing each other, one of DJ's tennis shoes between them.
"Make a loop …" he started.
"Make a loop," she repeated, moving her own fingers as he demonstrated with the shoelaces.
"Wrap it around …"
"Wrap it aroun' …"
"And pull it through!"
"An' pull it droo!" She beamed up at him as he completed the bow. "You do it so good, DJ."
"This is how Daddy taught me, even before he was Daddy," DJ told her, remembering the first time he met Steve at the Life Sized Candyland event when he was in kindergarten. He had tripped over his shoelaces and a stranger with a kind face had knelt down to help him, showing him how to tie his laces in the process. Months later, that same stranger with the kind face had come to his rescue during the scariest time in his life and that, in turn, had led him to his forever family and this moment of teaching his little sister how to tie her shoes.
Outside the room, Catherine reached for Steve's hand and squeezed it, blinking back tears in her eyes as their minds filled with very similar thoughts. He kissed her temple and the two of them entered the room.
The kids looked up and their faces brightened immediately. "DJ teaching me to tie shoes!" Angie said excitedly.
"I see, that's great, baby girl!" Catherine said, sitting down behind her as Steve did the same behind DJ. She kissed Angie's head. "I should've guessed that's what was going on, but sometimes it takes a big brother to see what's right in front of them."
DJ beamed at the compliment. He looked behind him at Steve. "Do you remember when you taught me, Daddy?"
Steve nodded, clearing his throat before speaking. "At Candyland," he said, his voice still rough with the emotion of the previous moment.
DJ smiled, subconsciously leaning against his father just as he had done at his aunt and uncle's house a year and a half ago when something deep down inside of him knew he could trust the man before him absolutely.
Catherine smiled softly at the gesture, then glanced down at Angie, realizing how serious she was about learning to tie her shoes when the mention of one of her favorite games didn't distract her.
DJ offered the shoe to Steve. "Do you want to show her now, Daddy?"
"No, buddy," Steve said, brushing back his hair and kissing the top of his head. "You're doing a great job. Keep going."
DJ straightened, his face shining bright with pride. "Okay, Angie, one more time?"
She nodded eagerly, and Steve and Catherine shared a heartfelt smile.
"Make two loops …"
Hope you enjoy!
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