Last Friday, Kim and I were driving to Philadelphia. About two hours into the trip, my cell phone rang. The caller ID displayed our daycare provider’s phone number. She rarely ever calls. The last time she contacted me on my cell was to inform me that Zack had hurled all over her carpet and needed to be picked up.

The words “Oh, shit” ran through my mind. As it turns out, I was sort of right.

“Hi, Jon, it’s Kathy, everything’s fine.”

Sign of a good daycare provider: preemptive inclusion of the phrase “Everything’s fine” in the first breath of any phone call to a parent.

“Zack has something he’s dying to tell you,” she said before handing the phone to him.

“Daddy, I did huge poops on the potty!”

Not just poops, mind you; huge poops. Very descriptive. That’s my boy.

This was big news, as Zack had been grasping the whole tinkle-on-the-potty thing just fine, but had yet to factor poop into the equation—which, on various occasions, had led to: self-induced constipation; a poop-on-the-carpet incident; and an overflowing pair of “Bob the Builder” underwear that just wasn’t designed to handle that kind of volume. “Can he build it? Yes he can!” OK, great, but can he deal with the poop? No, he can’t.

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