It’s time to teach Jaxon to tie his own shoes, so as I usually do, I did a little research on the internet for tips on teaching kids how to tie shoelaces.  What I found was quite amazing.  First, I had no idea how many different ways there were to tie your shoes.  I would have guessed maybe 3 or 4 options, tops.  I found a great website all about tying shoelaces called Ian’s Shoelace Site.  It’s got way more information than I ever thought possible about tying shoes.  It has 17 different techniques to tie ones shoes, which was a little overwhelming at first.  But after a little reading, there’s one knot that is clearly the easiest and quickest, and he happens to call it the “Ian Knot“, which just happens to be his name.  I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.  It’s surely not the way I learned to tie my shoes.  And I was even a little skeptical at first because it looked too simple, kind of like a sneaky magic trick.  So I grabbed a shoe and tried it out, and was very surprised to find that it really is as easy at it looks.  It’s also the fastest way to tie a shoe.  Seems like about 1/3 of the time it takes me to tie a shoe my way.  And it results in the same knot as the “Standard Shoelace Knot” that I use.  So I’m going to give this a go with Jaxon, and will probably even try to change the way I tie my shoes.  I imagine that will be something difficult to change after 30 something years of tying them the same way.  But I figure, “Hey, if people can change wives after 30 years, surely I can change my shoelace knot.”