Difficult Milestones

Both my boys are having trouble with their next milestones. First Peter and crawling. He is nine months old and he isn't crawling. I know some babies never do, and I suppose that will be him. I'm not too worried because he does everything else just fine and it isn't even really a milestone, but I just wish he would get up and crawl. He does the commando extremely well. He even does this inchworm thing where he pushes right up on his toes and folds himself into an angle with his butt in the air and pushes forward like that. He can push himself right up into a man-style push up, straight as a board from heels to head, elbows locked. He can get on his hands and knees and rock, and then lunge toward whatever it is that he wants. But he can't--or won't--crawl. I would say that life gets harder once they do crawl, but he is pretty mobile as it is so I don't think it will make a lot of difference. It would just look more normal, if you know what I mean. But Peter is Peter and he can do his own thing. If he just wants to wiggle and contort around in weird positions until he can get up and walk, then so be it.

Now, Jacob and potty training. I know a lot of kids, boys in particular, are not ready for potty training until around their third birthday, but he will be three in three months. Anyway, about a month or six weeks ago, I thought he was just plain ready to do potty training. He knows when he needs to use the potty and he can hold it, so I know he is physically ready. He can also talk to me about the potty and peeing and pooing quite fluently, so I think he is emotionally and mentally ready. But he sure is being difficult.

At first we had more accidents than successes, but then it started getting better so after about two weeks he would only have one or two accidents a day, and occasionally none. Then something happened and he started to regress. Now he absolutely refuses to use the potty. He will go away and hide and pee and poop in his pants. When he pees he just takes them off and leaves them in whatever corner he did it in, but if he poops he walks around with his legs spread really wide like a gun-fighting cowboy and then acts like nothing is wrong. As if I am not going to notice the poop-smelling cowboy parading around the house.

He will pee off the porch into the dirt, or pee on trees, or on the cat, or the rocks he set up to look like an airplane on the ground--but he will NOT pee in a potty. The really funny thing is this is only a problem at home. When we are out, he never has accidents. He will hold it and use the potty just like normal.

It's frustrating because I know so many parents who just told their kids what they wanted them to do, had a few accidents, and then within a few weeks it was all done. Here we are six weeks into it, and I have a kid who can hold it all through nursery or even on the hour and a half drive to Albuquerque, but won't walk from his bedroom to the bathroom to take a whiz. Unlike Peter and crawling, I can't just let Jacob wander around half-naked or with poop in his pants until further notice. This is something that has to get better sooner or later--sooner rather than later. He can't walk around as a poopy cowboy when he is fifteen years old. So what do I do?