Peanut butter vs Marmite

I probably don't need to explain the video. A (friendly) battle exists in multicultural households between parents, where each one hopes that their child will favour their own cultural habits. Well, the peanut butter/Marmite debate is a classic of the genre. Watch the video if you want to find out who, for the time being (kids are a notoriously fickle bunch), is in the lead.

More important, I think you will agree, it has been too long since I last updated the blog. In a snapshot, Kirin has been changing and developing so quickly in the past few weeks and months, that is hard to know where to start, so I will continue with the wonders of language development. A friend of mind recently suggested that now was the perfect time to read some Noam Chomsky, to experience the linguistic theory in real life. He's probably right but I haven't yet had time to read Chomsky, so we content ourselves with marvelling that Kirin knows so much more than we adults think they are.

Some recent highlights:

• Letters - I discovered during a recent reading the literary classic, Dr Seuss's ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book, that he knows far more of the letters than he was previously letting on. Notable markers included "P" and "Q". We have since starting doing a lot more singing of the ABC song, too.
  
• Numbers - He can count to ten, with half decent consistency, in English and Punjabi.
  
• Animals - Kirin has been able to identify the usual ones, such as dog, cat, cow, etc., but recently also pointed out a zebra (NB: he pronounces it in an English way).
• Names - Not only does he know my name is Ravi, he now can also be heard saying "Johanna".
  
• Sounds - Someone has taught him what a fart is. Not the most romantic notion that he manages to name anyone who does one, but I suppose it was inevitable.
  

The moral of the story: it is easy to underestimate, even for fantastically proud parents like us, just how impressive children are and how much they learn.