1. Sterling is demonstrating the first two findings I mentioned way back in this post: he can distinguish easily between two languages (Finnish and English, in his case), and he can adjust his interactions accordingly. It's almost involuntary, the way he switches between Finnish and English as needed. If you (me, you, a stranger, whoever) speak to him in English, he will answer "yeah." If you speak to him in Finnish, he will answer "joo" (it means yeah). Here is a short video I made to show how he does this - it's more for audio than video, so excuse the lack of focus and the, uh, baby nakedness.
I suspect he is acquiring Finnish faster than any of us, and is only held back by his overall lack of language skills due to his young age. I also get to see all kinds of neat language-y in things in action, like the time he told me he wanted bread, but I couldn't quite understand what he was saying, so he asked me for leipä instead (bread in Finnish). SMARTY PANTS.
2. Magdalena is our accent queen. She has always been good at accents, in Arabic as well as acquiring the accent of her British schoolteachers in Sharjah. And thanks to Finnish being a language that is pronounced as it is written (and thanks to it being written in the Latin alphabet), she can already read in Finnish like a champ. Here is a video of her reading a verse from the Book of Mormon.
3. Miriam's accent is also excellent, she's just not as keen to show it off. Her favorite thing these days is to speak "Finnglish" - English pronounced with Finnish letters. For example, she'd say "can I have an apple" like "kahn ee hahvay ahn ahpplay." It drives Jeremy and me crazy, but she and Magdalena love it. Oh well, let it be their own special language for now, right? It's no worse than Pig Latin.
