The Foot -- A Thing of Beauty

But first, Chantelle at Photomommy tagged me with this What's On Your Refrigerator meme last week. It was really a bad time to catch me because here's what my refrigerator looks like:

This is the cleanest you will ever see my fridge. Normally it is covered in toddler and preschooler masterpieces, various interesting and not-so-interesting magnets, a calendar, the pre-K calendar, the Religious Education calendar, photos of nieces and nephews, and the Leapfrog Alphabet and Farm Fridge magnet sets. Among other things. Mr. Daddy cleaned it off and put everything into a box last week, but honestly I'm surprised it's stayed this clean.

Now, back to feet. I think Bubba has a, um, hmmm....how to put this? Let's just get it right out in the open. A foot fetish. There I said it.

Ever since he was small he's liked feet and all things foot related. He started out with a particular fondness for shoes, particularly my shoes, which freaked Mr. Daddy right out. Not that he wouldn't love Bubba if he were that way, but let's just face it, life is much easier if you're fall into middle of the spectrum in terms of what "society" considers "normal."

Here's Bubba in his early days. He's probably about two in this picture (please ignore the large white arm in the background).

But, he soon lost interest in shoes and went to the source of his true pleasure -- feet. He's become a purist, if you will. He loves feet, particularly his own. He loves to smell them and he loves to make other people smell them. He'll even try to sneak his feet under your nose.

"Bubba!! I don't want to smell your stinky feet!!"

"You already smelled it. You already smelled it!" he'll singsong, laughing hysterically and completely cracking himself up.

Occasionally when he's watching a movie or is deeply engrossed in a cartoon, I'll catch him with his leg pulled up rubbing his toes back and forth under his nose. At first we made a big deal of trying to get him to stop. Then we realized that, toddlers and preschoolers being the contrary bunch that they are, we might actually be encouraging the habit. You know, forbidden fruit.

So we ignored it. But the toe sniffing continued and continues to this day. I really feel for Bubba's future wife, unless he grows out of it.

It could be worse I guess. His uncle Ratboy (name changed to protect the parties involved) used to capture his own farts in a can and try to make his brothers smell them. Compared to that, a little toe smelling starts to look fairly tame, right?