liquid aggravation

I’ve been awash here, in flash floods of the mellow yellow variety. It’s a bit puzzling, actually, considering that Shriekeur has been pretty awesome with the potty training the last couple of weeks. He had a very wet first day, but after that was using the toilet for his fluid functions with about a 99.9% reliability rate.

Granted, he was and still is inexplicably phobic of using the throne for solid waste throughput, but he asks for a Pull-Up when he needs one which frankly I find rather thrilling. (His sister, in her day, seemed not to know when evacuation was upon her and for a week or two, a daily bag of filth-impregnated drawers escorted her home from daycare. I cannot describe the misery that rinsing & washing those things induced, which was only compounded by first-trimester nausea.)

But the last couple of days may as well have been titled UNDERWEAR: FAIL for all intents and purposes. “Am I wearing underwear?” has become the tagline of the sudden puddle, accompanied by a woeful uh oh grimace and dripping, spread-eagle stance. At least – following a particularly odious diaper malfunction which deposited stanky liquified feces on the living room rug – at least he has managed to commit these errors on the hardwood floors.

If he hadn’t mastered toilet usage so well initially I probably wouldn’t be bothered at all. Heaven knows a bit of piddle here and there has negligible impact; far worse effluvia can and have been unleashed in any household containing small children. But the fact that he was doing so brilliantly and has now suddenly regressed is what’s bothering me. That and the fact that the timing coincides neatly with a sudden explosion of Fuck You! I’m three! attitude.

Because the last thing we need is for him to decide that appropriate toileting is an us-vs-him battleground. Because everything else with him right now is a battleground, and I do mean that in the apocalyptic, scorched earth sense of things. His stupendous irrationality can only be matched by his unfailing resolve to thwart even the smallest proceedings of the day. So I really want to avoid getting into a literal pissing match with him, because of course I would lose. Moistly and unpleasantly and about twenty times a day.

I really don’t have much more energy to put into this: already I feel like most of my time is spent accommodating the child’s urinary needs. I help with the trousers, I fetch the little step, I sing the happy potty song, I even delicately aim his precious wang into the bowl for him (oh the splashy mishaps we had as I was first learning the proper technique – and speaking of which, does anyone actually use that little peekaboo flap in the briefs? because adding another layer of complexity to the boy novice toilet-user situation strikes me as sheer lunacy).

So, how to get him back on track in a low-key way? We are absolutely not going back to diapers, we cannot risk the trickery and manipulations of bribery, and I suppose a catheter is out of the question. That leaves what, besides resigning ourselves to Frequent Incidents of Dampness or some kind of Clockwork Orange-inspired “therapy”?

Readers, now is the time: suggestions, please.