Dispatch from the trenches of the great Potty Wars II

I doubt it's an accident that I have very few memories from Boy Wonder's potty training days.

I think I've blocked them out on purpose and the reasons are coming back to me now as we try to manhandle Boo through the halls of big boy-ness.

Trying to cajole, force, tempt, shove or in any other way convince this child to do something not on his own agenda is an exercise in futility. Dumping like a big kid, included.

Daycare basically potty trained Boy Wonder for me, and all I had to do was fix the willingness to poo in his undies to complete the process. (Every night at "dump-thirty," I hid his undies and made him walk around in the buff--which he hated. He told me dogs poop on the rugs, not boys, so give him back his Buzz Light year tightie whities. Smart boy, right?)

But this one? This one is on us. And so far, the Boo the Battlefield General seems to be winning. We can stick a monkey on the potty, a lego on the potty, his brother on the potty and while he's appreciative of your effort, don't expect any from his end. It's almost as if the potty seat were made of fire the way he carries on and clings to your arms like a cat hovering above a bathtub of water. Comical, almost, unless you're the one being yanked down to potty level as the kid climbs over the top of your head.

Today we introduced the pull ups and were promptly rejected. It's almost as if he were saying "There's no way this thin, little thing can hold all my whiz, woman." He carried on and on and even tried putting on his own diaper in desperation.

When Daddy got involved, the three of us were in our cramped little water closet and two of us were babbling like goofuses doing anything we could to keep him on the throne just a couple seconds longer.

Eventually, I was forced to take pictures and video of him so he could watch himself "being a big boy"...he's his own number one fan on my phone's camera roll and he can watch himself saying "I'm not a piggy!" at least 20 times in a row before it starts to get old. You can see by the picture above how happy he is...the smile lasted just long enough to be captured before he started fighting us again to get off the dreaded toilet.

Sort of like labor pains and birth horror stories, there's probably a chip in our brains that erases the memories of the tougher battles in raising children. I'm not sure we're winning this battle yet, but at least I have half a dozen pictures and video clips of our family bonding time at the commode.