You say tomato he says potato

Naveen has it figured out. He's found a loophole in language development.

He’s decided that he’s good with what he’s learned so far – he need not go further.  Hair style is the only criteria necessary when evaluating one person's resemblance to another. It’s his only criteria. He doesn’t care about skin colour (this kid has ethics!), height, weight or age (he’s so not judgemental!) or even what species you are (we should all be so open-minded!).

Anytime he sees a woman with longish dark-type hair he happily exclaims, “Look Mommy, it’s you!” It doesn’t matter that we're watching a Revlon commercial or that the woman he’s pointing to is 23 years old with legs up to her armpits. 

And when he sees Janet Jackson footage back when she had short cropped hair (I was watching an educational documentary called Celebrities who are Hot and 40) naturally he thinks of Aunt Pat, Shaune’s 70 year old, Caucasian aunt. In his defense Aunt Pat does have short hair. And for a long time when a certain episode of Cat in the Hat came on, he would scream with great delight that it was Grampa. He was pointing to  an animated clam at the bottom of the ocean who had a mustache. 

What can I say? The more I saw this clam, the more I was inclined to agree.

He has no use, either,  for most of the five senses. He feels strongly that the phrase "sounds like" is all you really need.  Last night at dessert he told Deaglan that the chocolate frozen yogurt sounded just like a popsicle.  And today he noticed that his winter coat sounds like his older brother's.

I like his style. Simple. Efficient. To the point. 

When I was running my 10K on New Year's Eve I was thinking how all these extra words I have at my disposal can be really quite dangerous. It was cold and dark and I was feeling insecure, lonely, and thirsty. Hundreds of people whizzed past me.

I began to question whether I'd actually been running the right mileage for the past three months - maybe Shaune had actually downloaded the Indian version of RunKeeper, thinking he was being racially sensitive. Did their metric system work the same way their money did? 

Because I'll tell you, half way through I felt like I'd been running for hours, possibly days. I started resenting all the trim little LuLu Lemon bottoms that kept passing in front of me, while I lagged behind uncomfortably in my Costco get-up. I started making up stories about  the faster runners. Those show offs.

But you know what,  I made it. And in record time. I might be a little competitive after all.

Here I am prior to the race. 

Here I am after the race in the parking lot right before an enormous coughing fit.