Yesterday we were sitting in Barnes and Noble drinking our Starbucks when The Boy decided that he was going to revisit his aversion to coffee.  Or would that be attempt to overcome his aversion to coffee?  College freshman buy into the mantra that beer is an acquired taste and The Boy will lick the top of a beer bottle until all hints of hops are a faint memory.  What's a little coffee?  He refuses to be thwarted.  I handed him my cup.

E:  EWWWW.
K:  Give it back.

His father wandered back from a trip to the lav.  It was only then that The Boy realized where his father had gone.

E:  Daddy, Eat-ney pee too.

His father looked at me expectantly.  I looked at him like he has 24 heads on his shoulders.  If I even mention the bathroom to my son, he throws himself on the ground violently and wails.  If his father makes a suggestion, it is as if Dora the Explorer herself has come out of the t.v. and made the suggestion.  Why would you NOT take a child to the bathroom if he asked? 

K:  How did it go?
D:  It was a little complicated, but it was fine.

People, those words are what we in the business like to call "red flags."  The words, when uttered, seem out of place.  What's "complicated" about pulling the kid's pants down, taking off his diaper and plopping his ass down on the American Standard? 

Did I heed these red flags?  Did I even acknowledge these red flags?  Oh, no.  I had a caramel macchiato in my hand and I had just had 3 minutes to myself.  I thought, "complicated?  Whatever."

Until hours later when the following occurred as I was making a cheesecake.  I heard The Boy follow his father into the lav down the hall.

E:  Pee too, Daddy.
D:  OK, Ethan.

And I looked.  I still don't know why I looked, but I did.

There was my husband holding his son in a fireman's carry across his chest with pants pulled down and my husband attempting to aim his pee into the bowl.

K:  WHAT IN GOD'S NAME are you doing?
D:  He wanted to pee like Dad?
K:  All over the floor, all over the toilet bowl and occasionally in the toilet?
D:  Bitch.
K:  Oh, prove me wrong.  Prove me wrong, I say. 
D:  It's difficult to help him pee without his getting it on his clothes.

I have never once had this problem with my son.

K:  So you decided to turn him upside and let his pee just fall into the bowl.
D:  It worked.
K:  Oh, he's gonna be potty trained in no time.  Good job, Dad.