War of the Wills

I am currently in a major battle with my children.  Mind you, if you see us, it will look like everything is normal.  But it is not.  We may be going through the motions of every day and the carnage may not be visible, but my dear friends, looks can be deceiving.  Let me tell you about it.

Nadia and Brandon are getting ready to go back to school.  Now, depending on the day or what disaster has recently happened, I am either very happy or very very happy about this.  Yeah, that's right.  No sadness at all.  These two have decided that the cool thing right now is to ignore Mom and just do what they want, and I am pretty sick of it. 
I think part of the new problem is that they are nervous about school starting, who will be in their class, who the teacher is, etc.  We find all that out on Thursday night.  School starts on Monday. 
This does not give them the right to ignore me or pull attitude, however.  How shall I engage on this battle front?  With the sneak attack.  I have agreed to watch some good friends of theirs in the afternoon.  Plus, I don't think they realize how much fun time will be cut with the beginning of school.  There are only so many hours left after school, chores, and homework.  What a shame it will be to let friends play with their toys or ride their bikes while mine are left to wallow on their beds.  Oh, and I will make sure to rub it all in.  Yeah, I checked, the Geneva Convention is cool with it.  Perfectly legal and perfectly evil. I am going to break them.

Benjamin is the bane of my existence right now.  Do you know why I call him the Smiling Terror?  This story and the background info should clear it right up for you. 
We have been potty training for about a month.  I tried to get it done before my trip out to see my sis in VA, and we had made some good progress.  It went a little down hill at grandma's, but really, can you blame a 3 year old who is getting spoiled every day for not always remembering to use the facilities? 
When I came back, we started back up again full time, and things seemed to be going well.  Until I realized that Ben will not go #2 on the toilet.  I have tried bribery, treats, shown him the cool big boy underwear he can have as soon as he keeps dry all the time, and have even gone so far as to give him cold showers.  This is what we had to do with Brandon, and I hated it.  But it worked. 
What I am really worried about is that none of these tactics have yet proved to be effective, and the other Sunday, he was quite insubordinate.  Let me set the picture for you:  it was the last 5 minutes or so of Sacrament meeting, and I was starting to clean up the crayons and such.  Cliff was up front, since he is the new ward chorister, and Benjamin started to help me put things away.  He picked up a crayon, then turned and smiled at me.  Then his eyebrows went red.  For anyone without fair children, this is the sign that business is about to occur.  Like, within the next 15 seconds.  What was I supposed to do?  Oh, and did I mention Caleb was sleeping on my lap at the time?  And the last speaker was still bearing his testimony?  I was stuck.  So instead of grabbing him by the arms and yelling, "HOLD IT!!!" as I ran down the aisle and out the door, I had to quietly watch my defeat.  It was over in under a minute.  We went quietly to the rest room, where we had yet another talk about how appropriate places to go do not include in your pants. 
I am still stumped on a line of attack for this one.  All I know is it is ON.