What's in a name and parenting is not like riding a bike

So as we have tried to help Liam with screaming we try and give him replacement words. If he wants his brother to give him a toy to say toy please instead of screaming at him or bashing him over the head. So here are some funny examples of how well this works with Liam. Say for example it is time to go downstairs. I may say Liam go downstairs to which he responds with a scream. I respond to him with a "liam we don't scream please say yes Momma." To which Ironically Liam responds with a "yes Momma," and proceeds (ironically) to go down the stairs. It is so funny he does a total 180. One moment he protests with screaming the next moment he repeats you and then does quite happily your request. It's almost as if he feels it is now his idea and therefore safe for him to do. So sometimes we have food issues. I know I know this used to be my human garbage disposal. Once he figured out he is more in control of what and how much he ate sometimes meal times has become a battle of the wills. Well anyway for some reason he had picked cheese for this particular meal to be especially whiny about. By whining I mean screaming and hiding his face. Well we have a rule you have to at least take one bite then you can be done. Well this meal in particular Liam decided this was not going to fly. We spent about 20 minutes telling him to calm down and take one bite and he can get down etc. At this point his one bite of cheese had turned into two. I went over to him picked up one of the bites and accidentally said "Liam eat your hot dog." He then picked it up out of my hand and not only ate the one bite in my hand but the other bite on his tray. So I feel that parenting is not like riding a bike because when you have been away from it for even a few days you can find yourself forgetting very basic things. For me this happened after I got back from Mexico. I was giving the boys a bath. Everything had gone well and it was time to get Liam out. I got him out dried him off put on his lotion and set him aside. I then moved over to the bath and proceeded to get Wesley out. As I was pulling him out of the tub, I heard the sound of an elephant peeing on a flat rock. I turned around to discover there was not an elephant in the bathroom and there was no flat rock. It was in fact my little brown bear who had taken this of all opportunities to release what seemed like an unending amount of urine all over the tile floor. I panicked. I ran towards him with a loud exclamation of "liam no wait we pee pee on the potty..." By the time I reached him he had stopped (I think I scared the pee back in him:) So I turned back around to get paper towels out of the cabinet. At this point the peeing started back up again but this time he had turned his little pee-er onto the little bathroom rug. I ran to him this time determined to get some of that pee in the potty. I picked him up and set him on the toilet. I then turned around grabbing the paper towels and headed towards what appeared to be now two large pee pee spots to clean. It was at this moment Wesley exclaimed loudly and very dramatically. "mommy why did you throw my brother in the toilet." It was also at this time that I realized Liam was crying(now harder then before) I turned to discover that I had in fact forgotten that my 21month old could not sit on the toilet like his almost 5 year old brother. So when I thought I had set him on the toilet he had in fact lost his balance and fell into the toilet. All that was sticking out now was his sweet but sad face his arms and his legs. At the time I felt bad. How could I forget that Liam in no way knows how to sit on the big potty by himself. It didn't help that my oldest was accusing me of putting his brother into the toilet. Later I had to laugh at the whole situation and was bummed I didn't have my camera.