Framed

Friday afternoon, the boys were playing together when David and I heard banging, accompanied by Sacha shouting, "Ow, ow, stop it, stop it, STOP HITTING ME GABRIEL!" Although he sounded more angry than injured, I would have been remiss had I not investigated.

At the bottom of the staircase stood Sacha, hitting himself in the head with a hollow plastic tube,  while Gabriel played on the other side of the room. Sacha saw me and initiated evasive maneuvers, much as a cat who suddenly takes an intense interest in grooming to distract attention from the shame of having been caught doing something especially clumsy. I did not take disciplinary action, because I was laughing so hard I had no credibility.

Not two minutes later, Sacha started again, with the banging, and the shouting. Now things were getting interesting; although he'd already been exposed, apparently the joy of potentially setting his brother up was so intoxicating that he could not help himself.

While I admired his persistence, for the second offense, he got a time-out. As I led him to the step, he continued shouting, "Ow, ow, my bone; Gabriel hurt my bone!"

I felt the now familiar rush of pride upon being confronted with yet more evidence that while he may be in the fifth percentile for weight, my youngest is in the hundred and tenth percentile for balls.

Embrace the paradox

The delicate negotiations required to get Sacha to stop shitting in his pants have left me with an inverse relationship between soiled laundry and patience. For every shit in the desired location, there are several in the undesirables.

The standard advice for a hard case such as my beloved is to have them make their deposit in a diaper, while in the bathroom. What parenting manuals fail to mention is HOW THE FUCK TO GET THIS TO HAPPEN, because the mere suggestion sends Sacha into prolonged fits of rage.

While this seems like a perfectly reasonable interim step, in our case, the logic falls apart when you consider that a)we are dealing with an irrational being, and b)one of the cardinal rules of diplomacy is never negotiate with terrorists. 

My son is armed and dangerous, and he needs no yellow cake uranium to manufacture his weapon. When I consider all the time we spend strategizing, and carefully calculating our next move, it occurs to me that were you to substitute Iran for Sacha, and weapons of mass destruction for shit, the substance of the discussion would remain unchanged. When I finally succeed in putting toilet training behind, I will be eminently qualified for high level diplomacy, and I intend to submit my resume to the State Department.
 
Some people move forward without looking back, while others have a hard time letting go. Sacha is clearly in the latter camp, and he is mightily conflicted about leaving infancy behind and fully embracing childhood. 

If nothing else, toilet training Sacha has taught me that you're never too young for an existential crisis.

He is clearly going through something, and I empathize with his confusion. Yet he is four, and my third child, and I am done with diapers. Reconciling these two conflicting ideas leaves me in the position of wanting to hold, soothe and spank him, in equal measure.

Dispatches from the potty front

Since my ignominious defeat last summer, several people have asked me if I've had any luck toilet training Sacha. My standard response is, "Hell no, I would have blogged the hell out of that."

In the past few weeks, however, we have made significant progress. I'd like to say that after much reading of parenting manuals and soul searching, we managed to find the key that unlocked the mystery of Sacha, but the truth is, we owe it all to television.

Because there are a few things — eating and shitting being chief among them — that you cannot force another person to do, we have been largely resigned to waiting this out.

My mother, however, in keeping with grandmaternal tradition, is not above bribery. When I had the flu, I heard her ask Sacha what he wanted in exchange for delivering the goods. "Nothing," he replied. When she probed further, promising to get him whatever he desired, he answered, "T.V."

And thus, a plan was hatched. For every pee, he would get to watch five minutes of television.

And after months of failed attempts at behavior modification with stickers, tickets and candy, it worked. In two weeks time, we broke out the underwear.

Would that he would not shit in them, it would have been great.

But we measure progress by each individual's yardstick, and this was undoubtedly a huge leap forward. As Sacha still had no compunction about shitting himself, I was loathe to keep him in a pull-up any longer for fear of encouraging backsliding. As is so often the case with Sacha, he had us between a rock and a hard place.

And so we did the only thing possible, and procured many, many, many more pairs of underwear.

(I try to refrain from dwelling on the utter strangeness of cartoon character embellished foundation garments. It's just plain weird to see the image of Patrick Starr on your child's bum, like a bulls eye, or in our case, an invitation. Because we have been worn down to nubs by now, every morning after Sacha makes his sartorial decision about whether he will swathe his ass in Diego or one of the Wonder Pets, or the Hulk, David and I look at one another conspiratorially and offer this prayer, "Please don't shit on Ming Ming.)

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it say that yesterday morning, as we Jews say with Hanukkah approaching, "Nes gadol hayah sham." A great miracle happened here.

We clapped. We cheered. We called the grandparents. We ate ice cream for breakfast.

But lest we get too cocky, Gabriel offered this sage advice. "You know, Mom, Sacha's probably not done pooping in his underwear."

"I know."

Gabriel continued, "I would say, he'll probably do it three or four more times, and after that, maybe he'll be done."

And true to form, today, Sacha shit himself twice.

Two steps forward, one step back. Or more accurately in this case, one shit forward, two shits back.

Chutzpah

It is becoming apparent that my rogue nation does not like the new world order. In other words, he is pissed off at me.

It began with subtle remarks that, not coincidentally, entered the lexicon this week. On Saturday morning he was watching TV, and as I bent down to give him a kiss, Sacha turned to me and said, "Could you please go away?" and went back to watching his show.

I laughed this off, and came back a few minutes later to sit with him.

His response was, "I don't want you."

I've been hearing variants of this all week, always delivered with utmost politesse. I take this a good sign of my parenting; even when being rude, my children are exceptionally polite!

But civilly expressing his discontent was not getting Sacha anywhere. And so tonight, he took up arms against his oppressor, and BIT ME.

We were having a quiet moment snuggling, and apropos of nothing, he leaned over and sunk his teeth into my forearm. The shock, not to mention the pain, caused me to jump, and I gave him a slap on the back to dislodge his jaws from my flesh, and express my discontent.

When I released him from jail the step, I handed him over to David to bathe and put to bed. He screamed so loudly through his bath that David had to get Guantanamo on him and splash him with cold water in order settle him down long enough to hear that it is unacceptable to bite anyone, and he would not be watching television tomorrow.

Tonight we caught the tail end of The Incredibles on TV. In light of what I am dealing with, I thought it fitting that when Jack Jack's superpower emerges, it is, essentially, an awesome tantrum.

He can take as long as he likes to toilet train, but I will not revoke my fatwas. What a hard case I have!

Battle of big pool

Since my failed attempt at toilet training Sacha, I have turned to tough diplomacy. Specifically, I have begun to isolate him from the community of nations by denying him two coveted privileges. It has become apparent that I am dealing with a rogue nation who knows that the U.N. has no real power.

Put another way, I am attempting to kick him where it hurts, and I am not succeeding.

I drive a minivan (surprised?), and the seating arrangement has always been big kids in the back row, Sacha in the middle row, because it is easier for me to buckle him in this way.

Lately, Sacha has become fascinated with sitting in the back with his siblings, and since I won't move his car seat, Sarah and Gabriel have been alternating sitting in the second row with him.

I was touched that Sarah and Gabriel came up with this idea on their own, so that Sacha didn't have to feel like the odd man out in the car. But not so touched that I was unwilling to upset the status quo.

And so I issued my first fatwa: Big kids in the back, babies in the second row.

Ouch.

So now, we ride around town with Sacha pleading, "Back seat? Back seat? BACK SEAT!!!" This has really made me appreciate how long this town is, as I drive from one end to the other listening to this.

My second strike has hurt even more. Two weeks ago, Sacha discovered he could let go of me in the pool and swim by himself with his life vest on. He is intoxicated by his new found swimming abilities, and wants nothing more than to swim in the big pool ALL DAY LONG.

Which led to the second fatwa: The big pool is for big kids. Children who wear diapers must confine themselves to the baby pool.

It has been a week since I issued this decree. SACHA HAS NOT GONE IN THE WATER ONCE. He does, however, repeat, ad infinitum, "Big pool? Big pool? Big pool?!" I generally ignore this, and watch him have a fit as Sarah and Gabriel go for another swim.

Since it is unseasonably cool this summer, no big pool has been win-win for me. I do not have to make constant trips to the bathroom with my newly toilet trained son, and, I no longer have to brave the cold water. So when Sacha finishes tantruming, I can actually relax and watch him on the playground. And, I don't have to be quite as fearful about him drowning, since he never goes in the water!

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be buying a case of diapers on my next trip to Costco, and may very well be doing this for quite some time.

As with most parenting endeavors, patience is what is most required. And so, we wait.

But if we get sick of waiting, David has a radical idea that may work. He suspects that if we tell Sacha that he cannot poop on the potty, he will make a beeline for the toilet.

The potty wars

Sunday night Sacha pulled off his diaper while watching TV, because who doesn't prefer watching their favorite show bare-assed?

Instead of replacing his foundation garment, like I usually do, I tried a different approach, just for kicks. I told him he had to sit on the floor, not the couch, and that if he peed, he would loose TV privileges. An hour later, he was still sitting happily, engaged in the favored American pastime of watching TV while playing oneself. And he was holding his water.

He is 3-1/2, and I have been waiting for some kind of sign that he is ready, or even slightly interested, in MOVING TO THE NEXT LEVEL. Perhaps this was the sign I'd been looking for? I broke out the underwear.

Oh, how wrong I was!

Monday was relatively smooth. Apart from what I (mistakenly) thought was a minor accident at camp, he did fine. He peed whenever I took him to the bathroom. He did not poop, but I expected this would be the case, figuring he would find night time the right time to do the deed, once he was safe in a pull-up. I checked him before going to bed; nothing. When he woke on Tuesday morning, he was still clean.

Interesting, I thought; my adversary's powers of withholding are stronger than I anticipated.

When I picked him up at camp on Tuesday, I learned that he had SHIT IN HIS UNDERWEAR. (Oh, dear.)

Fascinating, I thought; my adversary is cunning too; he chose a strategic moment, when I was not around, to unleash the contents of his bowels.

This, of course, was not a fluke, as he showed me when we got home, and PROCEEDED TO DO IT AGAIN, on my watch.

It had not yet occurred to me that we were now locked in a power struggle from which I had no possibility of deescalating.

Still undeterred, on Wednesday morning, I tightened the screw a quarter turn. I told Sacha that it was unacceptable to go to camp and soil his underwear — it would be embarrassing to be expelled from summer camp for such an offense, and would look awful on his permanent record — and so, he would have to do his business on the toilet, before going to camp.

He sat on the potty for 30 minutes. He peed like a champ. NO NUMBER TWO.

And now, it was time to leave for camp. Oh, shit. (No pun intended.)

I wanted him to go to camp. He wanted to go to camp. I brought him in and escorted him to the toilet, where he peed some more. Who knew he had so much water in him?

Having grown up in New York City (Staten Island is part of NYC, thank you very much), I am a highly skilled at parallel parking, but by now, the car was wedged in so tightly that there was no possibility of exit until someone else pulled out.

I consulted some experts, namely, the camp directors, who brought me to my senses.

To sum up: I had failed to heed two pieces of sage advice, and as a third time parent, should have known better. "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," and "Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!"

Chastened, I bid a tactical retreat. Back to diapers for now. I lost the battle, but I will ultimately win the war. Although he may come alarmingly close, I know that my son will go to kindergarten in underwear.

My ignominious defeat reminded me of a few important lessons. Despite one's many years of parenting experience, you never quite know what you are doing. And more importantly, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him shit.