Wednesdays is free admission day at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. So that's when I take my kids. I like to take them one at a time so it's more special. One day last fall it was Ranin's turn. We wandered upstairs and down and decided we both liked the sculpture of the "Wounded Indian" best. As we were leaving we went into the museum shop and bought his sister, Gracie, a pair of earrings for her birthday.

It was then that their eyes met. Ranin and Thelonius. Thelonius and Ranin. Thelonius was a black, stuffed spider monkey (a toy - not a victim of taxidermy!) that was sitting on the shelf. It was love at first sight. Ranin beseeched me for the monkey. I relented. On the way out we wondered what to call him and I thought of Thelonius, after Thelonius Monk. It fits him very nicely.

The children fawned over him like a new baby when we brought him home. They made up a song and started calling him, "The Loneliest Monkey." So when Christmas came a month later, I bought him a friend -- a stuffed brown spider monkey, which they named Roy. Sometime in those early weeks, Tymon and Ranin began to make up voices for them. They took on distinctive personalities. The voices are kind of a swallowed take off on Dudley Do-right mixed with Goofy.

Thelonius: "Let's play."

Roy: "Okay, I'll start."

Thelonius: "No, I'll start."

Roy: "No, ME!"

Then they start to pound each other and fight and then they are thrown into the air and as they descend to the floor, Thelonius says, "Fire and brimstone!"

Roy: "See, you made us go to hell."

Thelonius: "I did not, it's your fault."

Roy: "No it's not, it's your fault." More pounding and fighting.

Thelonius: "Fire and brimstone! Oh no!" They are thrown into the air again, and they descend into hell again.

Tymon and Ranin dug through boxes of discarded and forgotten stuffed animals to flesh out their family. They found Mary, a baboon puppet missing her facial features. They gave her the voice of Julia Child -- she was known to eat the other monkeys suddenly and then say, "Oh my children, I'm so terribly sorry -- I don't know what came over me!"

They found a little blue gorilla from Disney's, "Tarzan" movie, which was a McDonald's prize. They renamed him Pedro and gave him a Mexican voice with a limited Spanish vocabulary. "Buenos noches. Torro! Torro!" Mooch is a beanie baby that was adopted, too.

For Ranin's 9th birthday, we went back to the museum gift shop and found two female monkeys with beards, holding babies. They were presented as wives and babies to Thelonius and Roy at Ranin's roller skating birthday party. They were named, Mika and Kiki, and Chichi and Zik. (The beards were hacked off the females to preserve their self esteem.)

Since November, one of Thelonius' eyes popped out and had to be replaced with a button, and the other eyeball broke in two. One leg was pulled off and resewn on at an angle (my surgery) and his once beautiful fur is now hopelessly matted. Once on a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, Thelonius was thrown into the air and landed in a tree outside an expensive jewelry store. Ranin hoisted himself up the trunk and a man inside got him a broom to dislodge Thelonius from the branches. They've been through a lot together.

Thelonius, Roy and their families come with us everywhere now -- to the beach -- to church -- to the mall -- their distinctive personalities and quick wit have become permanent additions to our family.

They remind me of the story of the "Velveteen Rabbit", in which there is a conversation between the Skin Horse and the Rabbit.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side.

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real."

Of kors Im reel. Wy wood yu make this story so corny? Roy, look at this cool tipe riter. Look, wen yu push the buttins you see it on the TV. Lets rite Shakespeare. 2B or not 2B...