Because Liam is a path-of-greatest-resistance child, we’ve had to conquer most of his developmental milestones the hard way. Don’t misunderstand. We have always tried the “easy” way first. But, Liam laughed heartily at the normal, approved methods of sleep training, weaning from the breast, weaning from the bottle, and learning to walk, which he begrudgingly did at SEVENTEEN MONTHS of age. Finally, one day he just sighed and rolled his eyes at us, toddled across the floor, and then sat back down to finish the advanced trig problem he’d been working on before we had the nerve to bother him with the whole walking upright crap.

There is no middle ground for Liam. He is either angelic or rotten. Extremely advanced or extremely delayed. Poor kid got a double whammy of this genetic cocktail from both Bill and me. We inevitably fall on either the far left or far right of any given bell curve. Ability to spike a volleyball into an opponent’s face rendering them an unconscious heap on the floor? Jill, far right. Bill, far left. Ability to balance an entire check book in one’s head…in 12 seconds? Bill, far right. Jill, far left. I’m not sure who in his family Bill blames for passing this characteristic along to him, but I blame my Dad for mine. 100%. Mum, you’re totally off the hook for this one. Many times I’ve heard the quote my exasperated Papa Summerville uttered to my then teenage Dad; “Nothing in moderation! Not a GOD!-DAMN! thing in moderation!!” And so it goes two generations later…

For the last year, we have been trying to achieve the mother of all milestones with Liam. Potty training. Yes, I know it’s harder to train boys. Yes, I know they’ll go when they’re ready. Yes, I’ve been in enough chat rooms and on enough message boards to know that some parents who didn’t have a hard time potty training will use it as a platform to feel superior to those of us who are elbow deep in poopy SIZE 7 Pampers Cruisers. (41+ lbs., folks!! If not for those, he’d be sporting Depends.)

About a year ago, Liam gave us the smallest glimmer of hope that we would not have to travel the path lined with shattered beer bottles to get him potty trained. He put pee-pee in the potty for the first time! Bill and I did a wildly unattractive celebratory dance that culminated with me dumping the potty over Bill’s unsuspecting noggin like the head coach of the winning football team getting a Gatorade shower. Positive reinforcement and all that rot. Liam could not have been more horrified that we were happy and praising him. “NO MUM-MUM SAY, ‘GOOD JOB!’ AHHHHHHHHHHHHHARRRRRRRRAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NO DAH-DAH SAY IT!!!”

From that moment on, he would have nothing to do with the potty. For a year we tried all of the normal potty training tactics and got nowhere. So, this morning, we went cold turkey. No more diapers, period. Liam will strut around naked from the waist down until he’s successfully using the potty and we’ll use pull-ups for naps and at night. I very calmly explained to Liam that we were saying ‘bye-bye’ to his diapers, that he was a big boy and it was time to start using the potty. He wasn’t on board with that idea and whimpered pitifully, trying desperately to convince me to let him keep his soggy, overnight diaper on. I gently told him ‘no’ and then pried off the last diaper that our eldest son will ever wear and put it in the diaper pail.

Thus begins Day 1 of Potty Training Boot Camp. Buckle-up, buttercup. This is going to be a horror show and I’m going to share it all with you.

The world, as seen by Nate at two, is apparently very different than the one seen by the rest of us. When we first began teaching him the basic colors, everything was green. Everything. Unless it really was green, in which case it was either red, pink, or orange. This made possible the following exchange:

“Nate, what color is this orange?”

“Gree!”

“What about these greens?”

“Or-anch!” 

And while he may be technically wrong, he’s at least gleefully technically wrong. He believes in the response he’s giving, and he loudly delivers it with such enthusiasm that it makes me smile, if not hope that Jill isn’t somewhere trying to put down Sam or transport nitroglycerin from one side of the room to the other.

He’s also spectacularly letterblind. 

We’re in the big bathroom. Liam’s standing on his toes and leaning over the edge of the old clawfoot tub, repeatedly filling a plastic pitcher, then emptying it. Nate pulls out a toy-filled basket from under the changing table and turns it, spilling its contents onto the floor. ”Uh-oooh,” he says, looking up at me. Liam pauses briefly and turns around.

“Liam didn’t do that, Da-da,” he informs me helpfully, always quick to point out when he’s in the right, even when accidental. He stares at Nate for a moment before turning back to the faucet. We’ve been trying to teach him to use personal pronouns, but for now, he continues to call everyone by name, himself included.

“Keep that water in the tub, buddy. Understand?”

“Stand.”

“Thank you.”

I kneel down. Among the jumbled assortment of bath toys are oddly-matched ducks, foam letters, plastic hippos, and at least three incarnations of Elmo, one of whom is on a jet ski. I separate several of the foam letters.

Nate, what letter is this?” I ask, pointing to the A.

“R!” Nate exclaims excitedly, settling back onto the floor and leaning in. Liam continues to provide background sloshing.

“That was an ‘A’. Okay, now…” I point to the K. “What letter is this one?”

“G!”

“‘K’? Alright. What about this E? What letter is this E?

“O!”

“Are you even listening to Da-da? Let’s try something else. What color is this?” I ask, holding up the A.

“Gree!”

“That was red. And what about this one? What color is it?” - K

“Pink!”

“Purple. Aaaand, this? What color is it?” - E

“R!”

“Close, blue. And what color is this one? I ask, holding up the K again.

“Or-anch!”

He looks at me happily, and Liam sloshes another pitcher down into the drain, keeping that water in the tub.

Nodding, I add ‘bomb squad technician’ to the list of things Nate might want to avoid becoming when he grows up, along with ‘air traffic controller’, ’eye chart designer’, and ’stoplight’.

On the positive side, he could still potentially have a career in Navajo code talking, country music, or barring either of those, government service.

“Is that a dead bug?” Jill asks, squinting.

“Where?”

“Right there, under the lamp.”

I answer, “Oh, that. Yeah.”

“Why is it there?”

“I put it there.”

“But why did you put it there?” she persists.

“Because I wanted to put it somewhere where the boys wouldn’t mess with it, and where you wouldn’t see it?”

“Uh-huh…”

“…because I want to take a picture of it.”

“You want to take a picture. Of a dead bug.”

“I think it’s a stinkbug.”

Over the weekend, I was able to snap a few pictures of the elusive squirrel as he sniffed around our porch pots, then mysteriously disappeared back into the trees.

Bill finishes trying on a new pair of jeans I bought for him and hands them back to me with his approval. He stands in front of the mirror, glorious in his pantlessness, and fashions his shirt into a makeshift bodysuit.

J: “That’s attractive! I think you should wear a catsuit version of that to work!”

B: “Like a unitard!”

J: “Yeah, emphasis on tard…”

Dear Gaggle of Squirrels Living In Our English Walnut Tree,

I am a busy, temperamental woman. There is no June-Cleaver-string-of-pearls-chirpy-bluebird bullshit in this house. I work my rather large, often unshowered, ASS off taking care of my three giant squirrels (all of whom have their own nuts). The baby squirrel thinks I am his personal chew toy. The middle squirrel is wildly creative and toils away thinking up clever new ways to shred himself and give me a stroke. The eldest squirrel is smarter than I am. (Today during lunch, he lulled me into a false sense of security. He successfully ate two cups of strawberry applesauce ‘like a big boy’, which is to say he used a spoon and got 90% of said sauce into his pie-hole. I gave him a third, at his request, and went to check my e-mail. Ahhhhhh, stupid girl. When I returned, I found the third cup empty, its contents now atop his giant head. His matted, shiny hair was shellacked into a smooth helmet, making him look like GI Liam.)

THEREFORE, I do not need your silly asses making any extra work for me! I do not find it cute or amusing that over the long winter you have forgotten where you hid your nuts and search for them EVERY FUCKING DAY in all twenty of my potted porch plants like amnesiacs on a scavenger hunt. Every day, I sweep the dirt from the porches and every day, you dig for the magic, invisible nuts, leaving drifts of potting soil in your wake.

Look. I admit that you’re kind of cute in a bushy rat way. And, I sympathize with the fact that you run your operation with a brain the size of a cornflake. However. I am an inherently explosive individual with few outlets for this personality flaw. You, my friends, are my outlet, so consider yourselves warned. Pass the word. Put a post-it by the knothole on the tree or call a squirrel town meeting. Let the whole gang know that there is a serious amount of crazy headed your way.

So help me, I will tie raw shrimp to your ludicrous, fluffy tails and sic my unfed-for-a-week cats on you. I will slow cook you in barbeque sauce and serve you up as an appetizer at our next party. I will hide penny-sized land mines in your favorite pots and explode you into squirrel confetti.

Stay. out. of. the. pots.

Suck it,

Jill

The contents of my pockets are as follows:

Work badge
4 Samurai 12 Club cards
Unidentified Plastic Thing
Big Wallet
Little Wallet
Pink highlighter
Ballpoint pen
$73.43
2GB CompactFlash® card w/ PCMCIA adapter
2 business cards
4 receipts
Drawing of a chin, ear, and mouth
Keys
Vitamin E capsule
Dental floss
Yellow ball