Jonathan gave me “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” for Christmas. It’s a documentary about a man who befriends a flock of conures and parakeets who live in San Francisco. For a bird person such as myself the movie is very interesting, but it focuses too much on Mark Bittner, the man who feeds and cares for injured members of the flock. The movie makes himself out to be a modern-day Zen Master. I know most bird people are a little wacko (myself included) but…. Well, let’s just say this movie confirmed our previously held belief that San Francisco, like Vancouver, is comprised of about 96% wackoes.

But who’s the more wacko? The wacko or the wacko who isn’t sure how to spell the plural of “wacko?”

A lot of people still look at Benjamin and Jonah and assume they are identical twins. You can tell they are brothers, but they look very different from each other. A couple of days ago a woman assumed they were identical and I said that actually they’re fraternal. She said, “No! They look exactly alike!” With a polite smile, I said something along the lines of: “When you look closely [HINT: GET GLASSES, YOU FREAK], they are actually quite different.” She shrugged her shoulders and said with a huff, “If you say so!” Damn straight, I say so! Good grief, woman!

Anyhoo…..Jonah is skinny, curious, and flexible. This is a dangerous combination for a crawler. He emptied his toy bin then climbed inside it. A few minutes later it tipped over and he landed smack on his head. I was holding Benjamin so it took me several seconds to get to him. He was doing that silent screaming and couldn’t actually emit a sound until I had been holding him for another several seconds. Eek – that was a bad one. A few hours later I left him alone for literally 15 seconds and I found him sitting on top of a paper ream box, happy as can be. We may have to install a climbing wall on the patio to satisfy these vertical urges.

Friends of ours just had their second baby on Wednesday and they brought Emma to the pediatrician this morning for her newborn checkup. Since the office is across the street, the boys and I walked over to give Emma her gift and her parents some beef stew. (I remember very well the days of coveting any homemade food!) Emma’s older brother Ashton and his grandmother came along and had planned to go to the park, but since it was raining, I invited them to our house during the appointment.

Oh my! Two-year-olds are so busy! They kick, they throw, they yell, they are in constant motion! (and Ashton is well-behaved!) I am a little scared of having two of these creatures running amuck soon… ack!

Jonah has turned our house into a percussion factory. He rattles the chair against the wall. He fwaps his palms on the couch. He shakes the rails of his crib. He slaps his hands on the tile floor. He kicks his legs when laying in his crib. Bam, bam, bam!

Jonah is also undergoing a bit of Coddling Detox. His Abuela loves to coddle him and Jonah loves to be coddled. After a week of this he turns into a whiney little thing who wants to be held and entertained constantly. A few more days, though, and he’ll have it out of his system. At least until the next visit.

And speaking of in-laws, our pastor is preaching a series on marriage and family issues. Yesterday he quoted a study of the most important things to be in agreement on before getting married. One of them was in-laws. “It’s okay if your in-laws are insane, you can deal with that,” he said. “But you both have to be in agreement that they are insane.” This made me laugh and say to Jonathan, “At least we agree that our parents are all insane!” (His Mom: insane. My Dad: insane. My Mom: so darn normal that she must be insane.)

Just before the boys’ afternoon nap today, I asked Jonah if he wanted to listen to some music. He looked over at the stereo. I put in their “Philadelphia Chickens” CD. This always makes them come over, stand up, and fiddle with the volume knob and other stereo controls. While Jonah was fiddling, he reached higher and pressed the power button on the TV for the first time. Since we don’t have cable, the DVD screensaver came on.

And what did Jonah – this kid who has watched maybe ten minutes of television in his life – do next? He looked up, saw the screensaver, immediately sat down, crawled three spaces back, and looked up at the TV with expectant delight.

I laughed so loud and suddenly at this that I made him cry.

Did you know? Faced with large coffee surpluses in the 1930s, the Brazilian government asked Nestle to research a new product. In 1938 it introduced a dried brown coffee powder that would eventually be sold worldwide as Nescafe.

We met another pair of fraternal twin boys who live a few houses up the street from Jonathan’s uncle. At four months of age, they are Freakishly Large. In fact, it’s hard to tell if they are cute or not because of all the excess blubber. The larger one is twice as wide and probably weighs nearly as much as Jonah. I’m glad there was a fence separating us from them as we were talking because the smaller one was eyeing Benjamin’s thighs as a tasty snack.

Additionally, their mother is carefree, well-rested, and downright perky (and did I mention she has washboard abs). Jonathan did point out that she works outside the home during the day and the boys don’t have GERD/reflux.

Ahem! Matters! She should be under house arrest!