Sam has been abducted by aliens! Should I call the authorities?

When I went to take Sam out of his crib this morning he wasn’t there! Instead there was a little boy who looked EXACTLY like him perhaps put there in the middle of the night while we slept, oblivious. How do I know it’s not really my son that was in the crib this morning you ask? Well here is my evidence:

Morning routine the last two weeks or so (since we instituted potty stops)…

Sam wakes and calls for his Daniel (always his Daniel; I try not to let this bruise my ego). I go in and he looks at me and immediately asks to go downstairs and either eat or “voir Papa” (see Daddy). If he isn’t already screaming and whining, the screaming (as if his skin is being flayed from his body) and whining begins at this point. Generally it’s already started. He refuses to stand up so I can lift him out of the crib. If I’m feeling charitable I reach in and get him. If not there is much more screaming as I pretend to leave.

Okay now we move toward the change table to change his sopping diaper. More screaming about going downstairs to eat or see his Dad. The way he pleads to eat you’d think we never give the boy food. I explain in a calm Caillou Mom voice that first he has to change his diaper and/or have a pee-pee and then he can go and do everything he wants. He screams louder, kicks some, and at times hits me. Wonderful. I smile (inside I reminding myself of the struggle we went through to bring him home). Take him by the hand and put his little naked butt on the toilet. He screams and jumps down. I smile put him back on the toilet and walk away. He stays and screams and screams and screams some more. After, going around making sure all our windows are closed, wondering what the neighbours think we do to our children and waiting 5 minutes I return (I’ve learned that sitting with him just makes him scream more), remove him from the toilet – sometimes he pees; sometimes he doesn’t. He used to unroll the toilet paper and shred it in protest. Daniel cured him of that “hobby.” When he pees he generally calms down immediately (in anticipation of a reward) when he doesn’t …. Sigh. Diaper him while he screams and then send him downstairs screaming.

This morning:

He called, still for Daniel. I walked in and he was playing and hide-and-seek with his blanket. When he does this I generally play along (screaming does not ensue until after the game has ended) but this morning I was in a hurry – bus in 10 minutes! I pretended I couldn’t find him as I lifted the covers off of him and lifted him from the crib. He asked to go downstairs and eat. I asked him what do you have to do first and he replied “pee-pee.” There was no screaming. I was stunned; he does understand. I was beginning to wonder if he understood that once he went “pee-pee” that I would let him do whatever he wanted or whether he thought he was doomed to stay in the bathroom his entire life. He’d had me on the ropes until this morning. I was thinking of ending this routine.

He asked to take his little stuffed snowman with him. As he wasn’t screaming, I thought what the heck let him have a toy. Mean Mom that I am, I normally hesitate to let him bring toys with him because generally they become the focus and he never pees. We walked to the bathroom. I sat him on the toilet. Still no screaming. As I turned to leave he peed the biggest pee ever and had a big giggle, made stuffed snowman pee. Again I was stunned. This is when the reality dawned that this was not indeed my son but some replacement. I took him to his change table to look for the batteries. Finding none I replaced his diaper and sent him on his way downstairs. Since that is where he had been asking to go. No… he went to my bedroom and stood PATIENTLY by my dresser where I keep the stickers so that he could have one. I thought of how well they hid the batteries; you couldn’t even tell it wasn’t a real boy. I let him pick a sticker, which he took happily and then he did something that sealed the case. He asked for one for his sister! I gave him one and he raced downstairs happy and proud as punch to give it to her. No screaming, peeing AND sharing.

I wonder how long this boy will stay and when they will return my son to me. I’m hoping the experiments the aliens are carrying out will leave some residual robot boy behavior behind in Sam.

Okay, for those of you horrified by my toilet training methods. We aren’t really toilet training in the full sense. I don’t have an agenda (having been taught quite thoroughly by Kamryn that this won’t happen on my timetable no matter how much I want it to) and fully expect to be buying diapers until Sam starts college. We put him on the potty for 5 minutes whenever he is diaperless. That’s it. He used to scream to not have his diaper changed in the morning as well so it's not just the potty causing the screaming. He just doesn’t like not getting his way. The potty stop, which obviously isn’t his idea, isn’t helping reduce the decibel level around our home.