Legends of the Fall

YOU GUYS! Let's pretend we like autumn! (The season autumn, and not my COUSIN Autumn, whom I love with all my heart and soul, and I'm not just saying that because her sister would totally kick my ass. Autumn-the-Person rocks. Autumn-the-season sucks. Carry on.)

There are things ABOUT the fall that I love -- when the leaves change color and turn those lovely shades of pink and bronze and gold, being able to turn off the air conditioner but not having to immediately turn on the heat, Halloween candy.

And I like making soups and stews and roasts and casseroles in the crock pot and the oven, and busting out the bread machine, and spending Sundays in a house that smells so delicious that I sometimes consider gnawing on some of the old lead paint.

But I DON'T like when it starts to get cold and damp and wet and windy and all the leaves start to fall off the trees and they turn to mulch right there on the grass and the branches are all naked and sad and creepy.

And, yes, my kid gets no end of amusement playing outside when the weather changes, when you can tolerate the fresh air for more than 15 seconds without dissolving into a sweat puddle on the ground where you stand.

And also, she loves dressing up in her costume and going door-to-door with her little trick-or-treat bag, so naïve that she fails to notice that I have been secretly hiding the mini Twix bars in my pocket for the last half hour.

By the way, you guys, if she ever finds out about the Twix bars, you're all out of the will. And it won't work, anyway, because then I'll just start stealing the Kit-Kats and the Milky Way minatures, too, and you'll have to live with the guilt.

Sliding Into Home

This past weekend was gorgeous, or so they tell me -- I didn't really notice because I was stuck in the house with some kind of plague or whatever. Damned sinuses. So here are some more pictures of my kid from two weekends ago, when her "Flyin' Hawaiian" shirt was still a sign of hope and expectation.

She might not quite be able to work the swings yet, but we have no noticeable issues with the sliding board, except that this particular one is all plastic and seems to attract static electricity from other solar systems.

I love that, even after all these years (because, you know, she's 517 years old, God could I be any more melodramatic? [DON'T ANSWER THAT]), going down a sliding board still makes her so happy.

Still diggin' the teeter-totter, too. Not that I blame her for this one, really. Aside from the merry-go-round, which seems to have been removed from every single playground in the world, pretty much, the teeter-totter is one of my favorite rides.

See that Dora watch? It's about three hours slow -- or nine hours fast -- and the date is completely wrong, and if you ask Shae what time it is, she usually says something like "Time for a snack!" No dummy, that one.

This is the closest we've gotten to cake face in a while. Haven't been many birthdays lately.

Swinging for the Fences

One of the most unintentionally hilarious things that I have ever seen in my entire life happened over the weekend, when my kid was trying to teach herself how to work a "big kid swing."

I know I am a bad parent for being unable to control the laughter, but jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick, watching her try to work out the physics of the thing with her little body was just ... oh my God.

She sat there for like half an hour, saying over and over again, "Head back, head front, legs back, legs front," trying to move herself in time with her new mantra and getting nowhere.

I know, I know, it's not actually funny, but oh my lands, to watch her try to figure this out, practically throwing all 45 pounds of herself up and down in the swing, but not actually moving anywhere.

Guess you just had to be there. I'm glad that I was.

Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

Oh, hey, remember when we were on vacation and the kids spent, like, a day and a half riding their bikes around the garage of the beach house?

Yeah, that doesn't happen so much any more. Ever since we got home, Shae has been extemely bike-adverse, and nobody really knows why. All she'll tell us is that she doesn't want to ride her bike. Her bike that last year she couldn't wait to visit.

It kind of reminds me of some of those old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, where Calvin was afraid to ride his bike because he was convinced that his bike was trying to kill him. She is suddenly very skittish about the whole ordeal, and there is a lot of fussing and fighting.

I totally don't understand it all. I mean, yes, once I learned how to drive a car I stopped riding my bike completely, but when I was a kid I couldn't wait to have a bike. One of the greatest days of my childhood was the day we moved into the neighborhood where my parents still live, where I could ride my pinky Huffy 10-speed to my grandparents' house. Maybe the only day of my extremely misspent youth that was comparable to that was the day I actually got my pink Huffy 10-speed.

But right now it's a struggle to get Shae to ride. She'll beg my mom to bring the bike down from her house, and she'll spend all day with her helmet on, but she'll only ride the bike for, like, ten minutes in my grandparents' driveway, and then she pitches a fit and kicks the bike over, and that's the end of that. Five hundred kids could ride by on their bikes, but Shae wants nothing to do with it. It's really weird.

Kids these days. Humph.

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.