Some decisions are made for you

Me: Jackson, do you want a little brother?
Jackson: No, I want a PUPPY.

Because we couldn't just teach him breast and penis
or, another pre-op tranny-lover is born

Jackson (patting my breasts familiarly as I carry him on my hip through the park with Jack): You have boobs.
Me: You like boobs, don't you?
Jackson: Mmmm.
Jack: I like butts.
Me: Daddy likes butts and you like boobs.
Jack: That's what makes the world go 'round.
Jackson: And I like peckers!

What's good for the goose makes it hard for the gander to concentrate

Jackson watches a fair amount of cartoons. At first, the commercials merely annoyed him, as they broke into storylines he was actually beginning to follow, but eventually he got hep to the fact that commercials have storylines too, and he began to be just as interested in the swirly antics of the two guys in the fruit tape ad as he was in finding out how Billy and Mandy would climb out of Hell. The other day he actually asked me to turn on the TV so he could "watch some 'mercials." Though I've spent countless afternoons in my Explainer garb insisting that commercials aren't real, they're made by big and sometimes evil companies trying to lure you into wanting stuff you don't need, inevitably, at the end of a particularly compelling ad for a cheapshit toy or some candy that promises to blast your head across the room, Jackson will look at me and say, "I want that."

So the other day when I saw a commercial for Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs, the cereal that promises to taste exactly like a blinding bowlful of Count Chocula vs. Cap'n Crunch: The Deathmatch, I didn't know whether to (a) shit or run naked with my hair on fire, or (b) turn off the TV as fast as I could before he started pleading for boxes of cereal made out of Halloween candy that would surely ruin both his concentration and his pancreas before he reached the sixth grade. And there I was this morning in the kitchen, gloating as I heaped several tablespoons of Nutella and organic, oily peanut butter onto a slice of whole wheat toast: yes, Jackson may watch a brain-numbing amount of television, but by God I draw the line at non-European chocolate for breakfast.