A mother's love

My 8 year old, oops, I'm sorry - he's 8 1/2 now, knows what he likes and what he does not like. I adored dressing him in what I wanted until he turned 1. Then he started slowly voicing his opinion and refusing to wear certain things. Hey, I figure that's good. I'm 30 and still can't figure out if I like wearing certain things. The summer he was 2, he started insisting on wearing socks all the time. We did the whole socks with sandal thing until some kid in kindergarten told him that was weird. Then he decided he liked leather flipflops, but only when he was swimming or dying of heat. Thus began my yearly search for the perfect leather flipflops. An idea started forming to figure out how to knit him socks he could wear with his flipflops and before I had to think too hard about it, Spun confirmed it could be done with their summer sock collection. My son really liked the idea. And on Saturday I put everything else aside I was working on, dug out some cotton sock yarn, and started his socks. This morning I finished the 1st one:

The ends still need to be sewn in, but it fits. The sock is 64 sts around, knit on size 1 needles. I used the short row heel, and measured his toes to determine the stitches needed for each section. I didn't follow the Spun pattern afterall, since I am out of ink in my printer and didn't want to go look it up when I got to the toes. But I think I did ok. I started with the big toe and took 12 sts from each of the front and back needles, adding a couple of stitches in the middle. For the rest of the toes I took the leftover stitches and picked up stitches in the middle where the 2 meet. I decreased on the edge as I went to help the sock curve in with the toes. I should go read the Spun pattern now to see how they did it.
My son loves the sock so much, he wanted the 2nd one right away. 'Or should I give you an hour, Mom?'. Also notice the leather sandal that I hunted everywhere to get it in his size, even including my sister and friends in the search. (they live in other towns).We finally found it on a spur of the moment stop to get pop on the way to the wedding. (everybody stops to get their pop at Target, right?).
My son and I discussed the length the leg should be. He prefers the leg long, I'm like 'it's summer dude'. We compromised with a 3 1/2 inch leg that covers his ankles. (I did show him the socks that Wendy made her husband to show him guys will wear ankle socks. But it's just not for him).
I've made him 2 others pairs of regular socks that I've finished in the past 2 weeks. I'll post pictures of those very soon. This particular pair will get lots of wear and tear in the next couple of weeks. And I think this pair lets him know that his opinions and feelings matter. When he grows up and is off playing one of the many sports he rocks at, I hope he keeps coming back to his mother looking for more socks. And I'll keep pouring all my love into making them perfect for him. Cause that's what mommies like to do, right?