“Go put on a different shirt,” I ordered.

She huffed, but she returned to her room. It was a rarity that she didn’t argue with me.

After Hailey left for the movies, Elodie and I continued hanging out with our son on the floor. He had one of those playmats with toys hanging from it, and he was now kicking his legs around. Both of us were concerned because the poor little guy hadn’t pooped in days. We were on what we’d dubbed “poop watch.” If he didn’t go tonight, we planned to take him first thing in the morning to the pediatrician.

After about an hour of floor time, we noticed baby Ben got the look on his face that usually meant he was about to push something out.

“Oh my gosh! This might be it!” Elodie beamed.

Ben’s face turned beet red, and it looked like his eyes were bugging out of his head. He grunted.

“It’s happening,” I said.

And then came the sound of the explosion.

Elodie picked him up off the floor and ran to the nursery to assess the situation.

Several seconds later, I heard her yell from down the hall. “Ben made the motherlode! The motherlode!”

I ran to the room and said, “Let me do the honors.”

“No, I’m just so relieved he did it that I don’t even mind changing it.”

She handed me the dirty diaper, and I disposed of it in the pail.

Elodie got him changed and dressed in a clean sleeper. She handed him to me, and I lifted him up in the air as we danced around with him. This was what my life had come to—dancing in celebration of a bowel movement. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

We returned to the living room with our freshly changed son, who surely must have felt lighter after that.

Baaa. “Ben made the motherlode!”

“Did you hear that?”

Elodie walked over to the bird’s cage. “Huey, what did you just say?”

He was silent.

Just when she’d given up and turned away, he squawked. Baaa. “Ben made the motherlode!”

“Oh, man.” I laughed. “Are you serious?”

“You think it will stick?” she asked.

“Well, his last saying only lasted an entire decade.”

I hoped Anna was looking down right now and laughing her ass off.

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