These days it seems I spend a lot of time watching Noggin. If you don’t know what that is, you don’t have a 2-year-old. The latest and greatest show is called Ni-hao Kai-Lan.

[note: I think this show is actually on Nick Jr. Whatever.]

It should be insufferably and offensively cute, the kind of cute that makes you want to go kick a small animal just to balance out the cosmic scale, but actually it is just plain cute. Stupidly so. I love it. My entire household is obsessed with it, and we all have our favorite characters. I like Tolee, a koala bear who is obsessed with pandas. He wears panda shirts, and panda slippers. The Littledoo is into Ho-Ho the monkey.

Plus, we’re all learning Mandarin.