I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by Baxter's versatility at this point. After hearing Jordan's stories about his first visit to his new classroom and then witnessing his quiet attentiveness to Back-to-School Night, I should have expected him to take his first day at Jefferson in stride. But I was surprised at a lot of things: the way he ventured onto the monkey bars by himself when I gently insisted that I was going to talk to one of the other parents, the way he got in line the first time without prompting, the way he walked through a strange classroom and into his new classroom without once looking back to see if I was following him (I was).

Baxter got right into it, looking for a coat hook with his name on it and settling down on the rug in front of his teacher for their morning roll call. I waved a quick goodbye and was on my way.

But before I got out of the building, I got lots of reminders of why we liked this school in the first place. Baxter's teacher gave me an emergency contact card to fill out, so that they'd know how to find us even before the paperwork got transferred from his old school. The secretary in the office remembered that I was Baxter's dad and helped me through a pile of paperwork. She even made sure that we got our school T-shirts and sweatshirts so that Baxter could wear his on Friday, which is always school spirit day. Even the principal remembered me and asked how Baxter was doing. It felt like a school that — without being uptight — was being run by people who care about your kid and about doing things the right way.

Baxter and I chatted on the phone after his school day, and he assured me that everything went great:

"Yaknow what, Daddy?!?" (in that ridiculously enthusiastic, Dudley Do-Right voice of his)

"What, Baxter?"

"I don't have to do rest time at Jefferson!"

"Wow..." (Dad's less-than-enthused voice here; the boy needs more sleep than he's getting)

"Yeah, I know, that's great. Because I hate rest time at school!!"

"I'm sure you did, buddy."