HEY YOU GUYS

Shaezie here, pinch hitting for my mom, who is a total slacker. (Do you like how I said "pinch hitting" there, on account of it being baseball playoff time and all? Hahaha, I am SO FUNNY, you guys. Go Steelers!!!1!eleven!)

You'd probably never guess it because the weather's been so dis-GUST-ing outside (yes, that's exactly how I say that word, shut up you guys and stop picking on me!), but we've actually been kind of busy lately. These Flyin' Hawaiian shirts aren't going to wear themselves, you know.

I've been, like, running around all over the world and making my parents crazy and growing out of my pants all the time. Look at me! I'm all legs and arms and pointy elbows like a praying mantis with grasshopper legs. Boing boing boing! Good thing Christmas is coming, right?

Also I have a new hobby: growing my hair. Isn't it AWESOME? Except it really hurts when my mom has to comb my hair. She says I'm "tender-headed," but really I just like to complain about everything when she makes me get out of bed at 6:15 for school. It's still dark out, then, you guys!

My mom says this picture should be captioned: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" I don't know what she's talking about, but that's a pretty great song. I like to listen to it when we're playing "Dance Your Pants Off" at home.

This is me, running around in Lauren's backyard with a bungee cord. Why? I am four years old, and I don't need a reason to be a goober. (Mommy says that picture is totally unaltered, by the way, and that you should "click to embiggen." I think it makes me look like I'm a super-fast runner ZOOOOOOOOOOOM!)

Anyway, that's all for now, you guys. My mom will be back tomorrow with some more of her boring stuff.

Workin' At The Car Wash

I can't explain what possessed my kid to wash a car in a tutu and a craft foam pilgrim hat.

I can't explain about 99.8% of the stuff she does, really, because it's been a really long time since I was four years old.

And in any case, I'm 100% certain that when I was her age, I was not even in the same universe of awesome as this kid.

I am just glad that she does what she does and lets me take pictures of it for the Internets.

Aren't you glad, too, Internets?

Oh and by the way, she managed to do such an excellent job washing her Pop-pop's car that she also got asked to wash Aunt Shelley's car.

But everybody knows that this kind of awesome is a one-time deal.

I Spy With My Little Eye

Despite all evidence to the contrary, we don't spend the entire weekend in the pool. Most of it, yes -- the vast majority, even -- but sometimes we do find alternative ways to amuse ourselves. Even in the 100°F-plus heat.

Someone got Shae a pair of these Sunny Patch binoculars for her birthday (there is also a boys' version). I don't know why we haven't gotten them out already, or how she even found them in the 80 bajillion metric tons of toys in our living room -- don't ask, you don't want to know -- but apparently she's been learning about binoculars while she's been on "safari" at school or something, because she knew exactly what to do with them.

She headed up into the cornfields behind my grandparents' house and tried to see what sorts of trouble she could get herself into. She didn't see much, but she enjoyed being allowed to run wild in the high grass and the soybean rows. At least, I think they're soybeans -- I'm honestly not sure. Maybe it's alfalfa? I know it's not corn this year (that, I can identify), and I'm pretty sure the farmer practices nitrogen-fixing crop rotation. Anyway, she didn't see much back there except dried corn husks from previous summers, but I came literally face-to-face with several locusts. Make a note: it really HURTS when a locust flies into your face repeatedly.

She also smelled my grandparents' butterfly bush ("it doesn't smell like anything"), which really puts mine to shame. Theirs isn't as tall as mine -- the one in our yard is about 12 feet high, no joke -- but it's much bushier, and it has tons of purple flowers. I love my butterfly bush, but it am partial to the purple-flowered ones, and I especially love the rainbow ones, which I have never actually seen in the wild, but they always look so pretty in the nursery catalogs.