Good news, blogger friends: a) I remembered what I was going to write about yesterday, and b) The Biggest Loser is over until January, so you have at least two weeks until I rave about it again.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the aquarium with my parents. Jacob had a wonderful time—there were four people to chase him/carry him around/feed him rolls, plus all kinds of fish and whatnot to look at. We went to celebrate my mom’s birthday, but Jacob probably thought it was his.

When it was time for the walrus feeding, the trainer went through a routine with the I-forget-how-many-hundreds-of-pounds beast to show off all she could do. The best part was when she explained that what the animal was doing weren’t tricks, per se but “behaviors,” skills she would have naturally used every day in the wild, but that she was doing on command while in captivity in order to keep her mentally and physically fit. “Behaviors, not tricks?” I thought to myself. “I can use this.”

So, friends, today I share some of Jacob’s recently developed “behaviors”—things he does naturally (in the wild?), but will do on command to his parents’ delight. I wish I could have captured some of this in video, but whenever I pick up the camera, all I get is a video of the little man whining to hold it himself. Maybe letting him play with it that day wasn’t such a good idea.

Jacob’s skills run the gamut these days. He’s a bit of a Renaissance man, tackling a little of everything. If we ask him where his ear is, he’ll point to it. If we ask him what a cow says, he’ll say, “Mmmmmmm.” And perhaps the most exciting trick, I mean, behavior, is that when we say “J-E-T-S!” he answers, “Jets! Jets! Jets!” For serious.

The performance isn’t always flawless. Honestly, if you ask him where any body part is, he’ll point to his ear (although he did make one valiant attempt at “belly button” yesterday). The other day, I asked him the two verbalizing questions too close together, so he ended up telling me that a cow says, “Jets! Jets! Jets!”

I’d like to meet that cow, for sure.