Pee potty, mommy!

It was a clash of wills, one stubborn personality taking on another. One demanding individual versus an unyielding free spirit. One Mom pitted against an underwear-bucking toddler. And I thought I had won the potty training battle...

...until I realized that Silas has the holding capacity of, oh, 20 seconds? When I hear the words, "Pee potty, mommy!" I know I have a fraction of a minute to jump out of my chair, run upstairs, grab a startled Silas, remove all lower clothing, and throw him on the toilet.

I am quite certain I have broken the sound barrier while propelling myself to different floors within our house. I know there are feats of superhuman strength that are unexplainable - adrenaline-laced people have lifted entire cars to rescue trapped accident victims. But breaking the sound barrier?

Lulled into a false sense of security by my amazing athletic feats, I decided to walk with the kids (sans diaper) to the park today. Things were proceeding as usual (Jannika was collecting acorns in her pocket and Silas was shoving roly-polies into his), when suddenly... "Pee potty, mommy."

And here were are, still another 7-minute walk from the park and its bushes. Suddenly I've got Silas thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and I'm tearing off down the street, commanding, "Jannika, RUN. RUN!!!" And Jannika makes that heinous startled face people do when accosted in horror movies by an axe-murderer who has just jumped out from behind a shower curtain. And she runs...with no concept of what's happening aside from the fact that she's about to face certain death. It was one of those awkward runs where her gait just couldn't catch up to the panic in her mind, so she was kind of shuffling madly while wildly looking all around in horror and moaning a garbled cry of dread.

Two blocks (and seriously 3 seconds) later, I've got Silas behind a bush, out of people's front yards, and he's having the time of his life peeing on a beetle in the dirt. And while Jannika just runs straight into my arms without a word to give me the tightest tearful hug of her life, Silas reaches down and fishes out the drowned beetle while I'm not looking. Sigh.

So tonight while Silas was snuggled deep into my lap and I was reading him a book, when I heard the tentative words, "I pee on mommy!" I confidently assumed I had a 20-second window to look down and assess the situation before running with supersonic speed to the bathroom. I was mistaken. Not only did he pee on mommy, but also the couch, the carpet all the way to the bathroom, the bathroom floor, and the back of the toilet. Fail.