This was a weekend of firsts in the Woodlief house. To begin, Eli began full-fledged potty training. I got home Friday to find him running about the house in nothing but a t-shirt and socks. There's something to keep in mind when you potty-train little boys: They will pee on your furniture, frequently with neither awareness nor remorse.

We like our furniture, so Eli spent a good deal of his weekend on the potty. We read Once Upon a Potty to him enough times that I have all the lines floating about in my head such that I'm liable to say something embarrassing at work today -- not that we didn't already know it by heart. The names change depending on whether you've got a boy or girl, but the plot is basically the same: kid wets his diaper, grandmother buys him a potty, and then, after much valiant effort, he drops a load in it. It's the Horatio Alger of poop stories.

Sometimes during potty training, because life goes on even as the sphincter refuses to cooperate, you just have to put a few books and toys around the kid and wait him out. Eli, being resourceful and impatient, is rarely satisfied for long with what's in reach. So every once in a while we heard the grating s-c-r-a-p-e of the plastic potty across the floor as he propelled himself like a two-legged crab toward some object that momentarily held his fancy. It's a bit disconcerting to leave your child sitting on the potty in one place, step out of the room for a moment, and return to find him sitting on his potty under the kitchen table.

Caleb's first was a serious haircut. I'm talking high and tight. That's because my first was to give the haircut. This is ordinarily the wife's duty, but she left Caleb and me alone on the back patio for too long while she dilly-dallied upstairs. Here was the boy, and there were the clippers, and one thing just led to another.

It's amazing -- you can be married to someone for thirteen years and still not have heard every sound they're capable of making. Caleb said he wanted a haircut like Daddy's, and so I gave him good customer service, and I think any divorce court judge would concur.

After the massacre, I told Caleb to strip down to his tighty-whiteys so I could hose him down. He went inside to put down his clothes, and in the interim the wife gave my own coif a little touch-up (not without unusual vigor, I might add). Suddenly out streaked Caleb, buck naked. He frolicked as God must have intended before Adam decided that nudity is a sin, especially for those with a typical American diet.

The thing about Caleb is that whenever he gets an outdoor nudity opportunity, he likes to pee on something. (And really, guys, who among us doesn't?) So he marked the fence as part of his territory. Eli found this immensely fascinating, and I'm afraid that he drew the wrong lesson from it, and so I'm very glad that today is a working day for me.

People sometimes ask: does your wife work? As if what she does at home is something less than work. Use that sloppy language around her today, as she rushes about the house with a roll of paper towels in one hand, and a spray-bottle of carpet cleaner in the other, and you're liable to get a punch in the stomach. No matter how difficult we who work outside the home may find our co-workers, odds are we needn't worry about them taking a whiz on our bookshelf. And in the unusual event that they do, there are legal remedies.

But odds are as well that our co-workers aren't nearly as loveable as my wife's. So it's a trade-off -- we who go to work every day get to have adult conversations (such as they are) and be free from worry that we'll be vomited on after lunch. But none of our co-workers will be gathered around us on our deathbeds, unless we happen to work in a mortuary with a good employee discount. All in all, I think it's probably a good trade-off for those who can do it.

Even on potty-training days. Right honey?

Honey?