Well this photo will look awfully familiar to those of us with little boys: Maci Bookout's 3-year-old son Bentley peeing the bushes. By the garbage cans, naturally. Maci tweeted the image with the caption, "classy..." A-yup, yup, yup, peeing in public: It's a male's prerogative the boys learn early. (And by the way, that photo is adorbs.)

Have you been there? Like potty training isn't hard enough. Once they figure out how easy it is to whip Peter out and water some flowers, there's almost no stopping them! Go indoors and use a toilet? WHY.

Why?!? Because that's what civilized people do!

Potty training has got to be the worst thing about the terrific terrible 2s. Seriously. It's just so much pressure from all the other parents who have kids about the same age. Molly is potty trained! She wanted to do it even before she turned 2 1/2! Well la ti da Molly! My kids seem to think their potties are step stools so they can reach the sink and wash their hands. Yes, hand-washing has become a fun activity in my house. (Does Molly know how to wash her hands? Huh? Does she? Does she?) I kid. Sort of. My twins did show an interest in going on the potty a few months back. They sat on it. Clothed and with pants down. But there wasn't any action.

Now, like I said, they just use the potty for other things -- as a stool, a place for toy cars. When I was talking to my pediatrician about it, she told me something scary.

Potty training is just not going very well for the Berkobits family. They had to call in the fire department when their three-year-old son Tzvi got his head stuck inside his potty seat. Putting the potty seat around your head -- that is such a toddler thing to do.

Never mind that mommy and daddy probably showed him several times that it's actually his BUTT that goes there.

Silly boy! It all turned out fine in the end. The boy didn't want to let go of the seat so the firemen ended up having to cut through the back of it. "It's not every day that you remove a toilet or a potty from someone's head," a spokeswoman said. But the firemen told the Mrs. Berkobits they do this all the time. (Remove potty seats from heads, that is.)

Any mom who is in the midst of trying to potty train a toddler will tell you that when they've gotta go -- they've gotta go. And nine times out of ten, they pick the most inopportune times to announce that they need to do their business. But a 3-year-old little girl named Emmelyn Roettger definitely wins the award for the most awkward time to announce that she needed to go poop after doing it on a live Today show appearance.

Emmelyn went on the show with her parents because at the tender age of 3, she's a genius who is already a member of Mensa. But being one of the smartest kids in the world doesn't mean she isn't still a kid -- and when nature called, she just couldn't ignore it.

When I got pregnant with my second son in 2006, I had a sneaking suspicion that he was going to be a handful. I swear on a stack of bibles that the kid never slept -- even in the womb. So it was no surprise when I popped him out and he exerted his will on the world: Only Mom would do and, well, sleeping is for suckers.

It was with great glee that I finally got the child to sleep through the night when he was one. It was good, because I was thisclose to losing my mind (I only appear to be joking about that) and landing in the psych hospital. Chronic sleep deprivation is a bitch.

So it's really no surprise that my kid remains, at 4 years old, one of the most stubborn, willful people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

It's going to be something that treats him well, later in life, but for now, I'm about three steps from pulling my hair out and running away to Detroit.

Why?

Two dreaded words: Potty Training.

When it came time to start potty training my son, I think I just about broke all the rules. In my neighborhood, there's pressure to potty train your child early because some of the fancier preschools will not accept children who are still in diapers. But there's also a kind of arms race among parents, a bit of playground competition, like every other child development milestone.

Well, potty training is not a competition. And all the rules are completely useless. Ideal age? Using the right pull-ups? Scheduled potty-sitting time? Forget it. I think you need to be a potty training renegade to get the job done. For me and my son, it was all about waiting until he was ready, watching his signals, and letting him figure it out himself.

"MOMMMMMMMM!"It never fails. Just when I've prepared a meal for myself and I'm sitting down to enjoy five minutes of peace, the call echoes down the hallway."MOmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Can you come wipe my butt?"I enter the bathroom and there he is, my 3-year-old. He is pantsless and has arranged himself in the Sort-of-Amusing, Sort-of-Gross Position of His Own Invention: hands planted firmly on the ground, tiny naked rear end pointed straight up in the air. It is now my job to deal with his wee butthole, and any detritus that may have accumulated there.Suddenly, my turkey sandwich with mustard isn't sounding so appealing.

My daughter always seems to need new pajamas. Growth spurts, weather changes, what have you, I'm constantly searching for pjs for my (almost) 4-year-old.

I was on a few websites (they rhyme with "slap" and "bold wavy") and saw all of those adorable footie pjs. You know, the all-in-one kind, with the zipper up the front, little feet on the bottom. Don't get a much cuter sight than your little one in footie pjs padding out of her room on Saturday mornings, huh?

I spied one with cats on it. Kiddo loves cats. It was yellow. Kiddo's favorite color is yellow. And the cats had princess crowns.

Yellow princess kitty pjs. She would LOVE these pajamas. I would have to buy seven pairs so she could wear them every night. And they offered it up to size 5.

But I didn't buy them.

Damn that potty training (imagine me waving my fist in the air to get the full effect).