So we went to our favorite park to partake in a morning of swinging, sliding, running around, lolly-gagging, tomfoolery, etc. It was probably the coldest day since last winter. The wind was whipping at a good 30-40 miles an hour, but we decided to tough it out.

Alex was having a blast. Swinging, climbing, see-sawing, sliding. It was a great morning. We were getting ready to leave, but got pulled back in by the ginormous big boy slide. The prospects of going down that were simply too hard to resist. Since Daddy doesn’t slide right, Mommy took him up the stairs, sat down, and started a-movin’. All of a sudden, shreeks of pain and agony.

Alex has a bit of a habit of trying to stop himself from going down the slide by employing the “stick my legs out and into the side of the slide” technique. Unlucky for him, Mommy had the power of gravity, inertia, and momentum on her side and they kept sliding. He cried for a while and we assumed he hurt his leg a little so we headed home.

Once home, Alex couldn’t walk. He would try and try, but he just kept falling down. Not good. Since it was naptime, we gave him some ibuprofen, put him to bed, then called the doctor. They said take him to the hospital, so off we went on a now-beautiful Sunday afternoon. Really turned out to be not such a bad experience. We were seen in under two hours. The doctor was insanely thorough. Of course, by this point, Alex was trying to run around (albeit in a limping fashion); but generally didn’t appear to be in any pain.

The doctor said we should wait and see, thinking it was a sprain, and pass up the opportunity for an x-ray at this stage. So we hobbled home, $50 lighter in the wallet, and with a kid who still walked like the cryptkeeper. We have a follow up at an orthopedist on Tuesday, so we’ll keep you all updated.

Update: Alex had his appointment with the orthopedist last night. He’s been walking fine since Monday morning, so we were hoping it to just be a mere formality. He surmised that Alex cracked a growth plate in his leg, which, while sounding like it should be the worst thing that can happen to any human being, is actually quite normal and relatively benign.

Symptoms include:

• A brief burst of pain followed by seemingly no pain at all.
• Inability to bear any weight on the limb followed by running around like a crazy person.

Check. And check.

Alex has developed into quite the little humorist. In addition to running around the house laughing his butt off and “washing the spider out,” he likes to throw all of his books off the bookshelf (and read the last one left of course), play with his Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set (he can even tell you what “M” and “D” say), and wave “bye-bye.”

He has also taken to copying us pretty severely, so we have to start watching what we say and do. In this video, you’ll see him start to bang on the floor when Stef starts reading Barnyard Dance. She had no idea what he was doing until she realized that’s how daddy’s been doing the “stomp your feet” part since we’re usually sitting on the ground. Scary stuff.

Yesterday was Alex’s first opportunity for a vertical Halloween. If you remember last year, he spent most of it laying down, projectile pooping all over the furniture. So, we found probably the most adorable costume in the history of the world at Old Navy, and made him walk around in it. We stopped at a few of the neighbors’ houses and collected some loot, but mostly, we just wanted an opportunity to watch him try to toddle around in his costume.