I'm spring-broken.

I don't remember spring break when I was a kid. I remember AEA week, which had something to do with continuing education for Alabama educators, but I didn't call it spring break, and neither did anyone else.

But this was Alex's spring break, and I was determined to give him a good one. Sometimes beyond all reason, both physical and intellectual.

We went to the park a lot. I don't think that actually counts because the park is almost literally in our backyard. It takes five minutes to get there, walking slowly, and I know this because I've set the timer on my iPhone every day in the hopes that I would rack up some notable burned calories to add to my daily tally. Nah. Five minutes of "walking, pushing a stroller," according to My Plate, only counts for 33 calories.

Every day, when Steven got home from work, Alex and I went for a bike ride. The track behind his school is flat enough that I don't feel like I'm going to die, and the painted-on lanes inspire in him a limitless array of pretend race configurations. We've raced (and beaten, of course) Auburn, Tennessee, and "The Navericks," just this week. And that's not to mention the excitement of near-misses with two kids on scooters, an unleashed cocker spaniel, and a toddler named Brooke someone left to her own questionable devices.

We hit the petting barn at the state park, where we arrived early and were the only ones brave and stupid enough (on my part) to spend a good half-hour before the day warmed to comfortable. Alex brought a notebook and crayon and ran around heedless of the horrifying volume of farm animal excrement to take a survey of each animal he saw.



A goat tried to eat Katherine's stroller and pacifier clip, and she lost both socks before we decided to call it done.



A failed attempt at going to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch one day (thanks to a very well-intended grandmother) led us to the bowling alley, where Alex played one of the few operational arcade games a million times in a row and earned a whopping 59 tickets, to which I had to add $5.50 so that he could "win" the most expensive deck of cards ever purchased out of a mostly empty prize vending machine.

Pump It Up's pop-in playtime was our best choice of the lot. Alex jumped to his heart's content while Katherine crawled to the five-foot distance I allotted her before dragging her back to start over. She drew a crowd of preteen fawners, and Alex joined forces with a day-camp group while I sat on a bench and pondered all the germs they each were coming in contact with.



Afterward, we ate Chik-fil-A and I took them to Yogurt Lab, where Alex got an atrocity of Dulce de Leche with toppings of nonpareils and sour gummy worms.



All in all, it was a great week, and I'm glad we had it if not altogether sorry to see it end.

Have I mentioned that separation anxiety has suddenly kicked in with a vengeance? That Katherine doesn't want me out of arm's reach, much less sight? That she tries to climb up my legs, or, failing that, to fling herself backward so that I'll have no choice but to drop everything and catch her? That I've lost feeling in my left arm from holding her and have seriously considered cobbling together some sort of papoose-like contraption? That it's intensely more frustrating than one might have hoped?



No? Well then. Never mind.