Spring Fever: It's intoxicating and contagious — and it's not just for kids

April has a wicked sense of humor (just in case you haven't noticed). Year after year, it tricks parents and kids alike into swapping warm winter jackets and toasty-warm boots for something lighter and seasonally inappropriate. We wear sandals and sweaters to work and school because it's sunny in the morning —and then it snows. Is it crazy optimism or amnesia that causes us to fall into the same predictable trap year after year?

When it comes to spring fever, the people who come down with the real hard-core cases are the people who have been desperately awaiting the arrival of spring since, well, mid-November. I'm speaking, of course, about parents of babies and toddlers who, by early April, have plenty to celebrate, including the fact that they no longer have to push their whose four-wheeled “tickets-to-freedom” through knee-high mounds of slush and snow. Like their wide-eyed babies, who are drinking in every detail of this new season, and the spring-crazed toddlers, who have just discovered the wonderful slurping sound that mud makes when it’s forced to release its hold on a rubber boot, the members of the stroller posse are eager to spend every possible second outdoors. (Rumor has it that they only head indoors when there's a dire reason for doing so — like grabbing another cup of coffee.)

School-aged kids also succumb to spring fever. In their case, the key symptoms are restlessness and forgetfulness. Kids may be so busy daydreaming about kite-flying, bike-riding, neighborhood-exploring, and all the other fabulous things that go along with the arrival of spring that they find it almost impossible to remember to bring library books back to school or to brush their teeth at home. Likewise, the number of possessions that go AWOL suddenly increase exponentially. ("My shoes? I think I left them on the front lawn, next to the driveway.")

I don't know about April being the cruelest month (my apologies to T.S. Eliot), but it's definitely a month when it's easy to find 1,001 reasons to procrastinate and 101 reasons to under-dress for the weather. Perhaps that makes April the wackiest month. If I wasn't feeling so unmotivated, I'd look into the subject further and get back to you.

Your take. So how's the change in seasons playing out at your house? Are you finding it relatively easy to make the shift or are you and your kids finding it difficult to stick to your normal routines because you've been hit by a major case of spring fever? Are you extra happy to see spring arrive this year, given the severity of the winter we've been through, or do you always take time to celebrate the arrival of spring?