We spend a lot of time without shoes in my family. We have a "shoes off" policy year round when we enter the house, which cuts (but by no means eliminates) the amount of mud that gets tracked through.

But in summer, it's hard to keep the shoes on wherever we are, inside or out. And when I was looking at my little guy's toes the other day as he got ready to head outside, I was struck by how far he has come since coming home from Sakhalin Island in October 2005.

Then, his poor toes were suffering from more than four years of being crammed into shoes that were only rarely the right size and shape for his foot. Like many orphanage kids, he got moved up to a new size not when his feet needed it, but when the orphanage's budget made it possible. And many times, that was long after he should have been in a larger size. (Buckner International runs a program to help with the shoe shortage; I wrote about it here.)

So by the time he arrived here, his feet had all the hallmarks of hammer toe: Cramped, bent digits. I'm convinced that the goofy gait that he used when he got here was related to the poor way his toes made contact with the ground. I had bought him his first pair of "me only" shoes (shoes that would not have to be preserved for the next child in the orphanage) in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, but I knew that getting shoes the right length was only part of the problem.

My pediatrician--who is a go-slow guy--said, "Let's see what the right shoes can do". Luckily, we have an equally old-fashioned shoe store near home, staffed with the kind of guys who measure a kid's feet eight ways to Sunday to find the right footwear. Their verdict: A wide toe box and a narrow heel, for at least the first six months. Actually, we stayed with wide-toe shoes for long after that (except for a pair of Chuck Taylors that caught his eye for gym days), and he has become a big fan of Crocs. The result: His toes look now like they've been in great shoes his whole life.

Did any of you have foot problems to correct when your children came home? How did you handle it?