“I’m a Big Boy Now”

What a difference a little (better late than never) potty-training can make.

The Boy walks with a distinct swagger these days, like a young John Travolta showing off his new white suit for the first time.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk
I’m potty-trained, no time to talk…

He has a running commentary for almost every occasion now and has taken to reminding us that the old rules no longer apply. He helped himself to the refrigerator door yesterday unsupervised – a strict no-no – and when he was reprimanded explained, as if he were addressing a roomful of people with short-term memory disorder, that no, now he’s a Big Boy.

Since my last post on the subject, we haven’t had an accident worth mentioning. We’ve run out of toys to reward him with which led to a serious talk yesterday about how no further toy rewards would be forthcoming. He wasn’t on board with the idea until I explained to him that for Big Boys, hitting the can on time and on target was its own reward.

This Big-Boy bullshit runs both ways.

He still requires assistance and that’s fine. It’s only been a week, ten days, tops.

He’ll come running into my office with a stricken look on his face and blurt, “DaddyI’vegottagopoointhepotty!” So we race into the bathroom and get him seated on his custom throne and then the fun begins. He’s still not completely comfortable with the process yet, and the expressions on his face and his body language — during the process — are hilarious. And when he’s done, by God he’s done. He doesn’t want to sit there one moment longer than necessary and isn’t happy again until the paperwork is completed.

He may be only a few posts away from graduating from The Boy to The Little Man. (Pull yourself together, Fang. Mustn’t exhibit weakness in front of the pack...)

He even picked out the kickin’ pair of shades he’s wearing in the photo above. Previous efforts to get him to wear sunglasses have met with utter failure, but yesterday in the store, he marched up with said spectacles and insisted he needed them. Again with the Big Boy argument. So we bought him the shades and he put them right on. Even wore then for a while, then I got to show him how to hang them off of his t-shirt collar. He looked pretty cool that way, too.

Every inch the Big Boy that he is becoming.

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud… this one’s is as follows: The (Big) Boy is about to move from the day care he’s been at since he was 16 months old to a preschool in about a week, and the preschool lady warned us about potty-training regression which is typical when such transitions occur. So I’m a little apprehensive about that. I’m hoping we beat the odds. I am so over potty-training, I swear to gawd…

Plus the transition promises to be tough in other ways, too. The Missus is taking it particularly hard. The lady who runs the day care, Serena, has become almost like family over the years, like a particularly well-compensated local grandmother. On days when The Boy would arrive early, she’d take him from the converted-garage day care room into her comfortably-appointed home and fill him full of home-cooked Indian food. It took us a while to figure out why he was daily eschewing our breakfast (and often lunch) efforts till we learned the day care lady was making him a better offer.

We tried to pull him out once before, maybe a year ago, and she literally wept as she begged us not to remove him. We eventually relented at that time, but he is unquestionably aged-out now. He’s the oldest child there and has taken to calling the younger children “his kids.” At his new school he’ll be a littler fish in a bigger pond, which will be much better preparation for the casual cruelties life serves up on a daily basis than Serena’s oasis of peace and good-will.

He’s got to learn some time that with Big Boy powers come Big Boy responsibilities and I reckon now’s as good a time as any to start. Welcome to real world, son. It oughtta come with a warning label.

(And don’t even get me started on how much we’re already missing our Little Boy, and our Toddler and our Baby… I think this is probably the point where most people go crazy and decide to have another kid. Fortunately for us, I got most of the crazy out of my system long before I decided to breed.)