We really like the Baby Abuelita doll series in our house -- and I've written about them here. The toddler has Baby Andrea and Abuelito Pancho. The traditional Spanish songs they sing are terrific, because lawd knows I can't carry a tune.

The Baby Abuelita company has just added a little boy to their series of singing plush dolls, which up to now included abuelo, abuela and three different baby girl dolls. Javier looks older than the girl dolls, with his jeans and polo shirt and tousled hair. But I dunno, I kind of prefer the more traditional look of the other dolls. The baby girls in their cute vestiditos and Abuelita Rosa's vata and Abuelito Pancho's guayabera are so spot on. I want to put the abuelos in chairs at the kitchen table and serve them some cafe con leche con unos pastelitos and platicar with them.

I actually did a double-take when I saw these dolls at a Target store here in the D.C. area recently. I was like heeeeeeeeeeey Abuelita! How'd you get up here from Miami? I had previously only seen them in Miami, and at that, in the grocery stores in Miami, although I knew they did sell them in other places, like Wal-mart and Toys "R" Us, and other cities, like Houston. But DC isn't exactly a Latino mecca. Glad to see them, though. It was like seeing familia -- isn't that sad?

Now if I could only get a decent taco around here. I know, that's like my daily ask in these blog posts. Dolls que cantan y tacos. It's not too much to ask for, right?

Downtown Madrid is bustling with tourists from across the globe and folks hustling to make a euro. The Plaza Mayor was full of Disney characters, Bob Esponjas, and this strange-looking cabra-peacock thing that is the stuff pesadillas are made out of.

There are also lots of musicians -- including these mariachis we encountered at Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid. The toddler K started bouncing as soon as she heard them, the mexicana in her awakened.

And then we heard a British woman exclaim with such delight, "Oh, look! How wonderful, a flamenco band!"

Aye Dios mio.

I love watching junk TV and reading smutty chisme sites online -- me encanta. Over the past few days I've seen a lot of promo-ing for Madonna's clothing line Material Girl, available at Macy's, por si acaso. It's also been an unveiling of sorts for little Lourdes (Leon, remember? of the personal trainer/actor-ish father Carlos Leon). Lola is now all of 13 years old, going on 14 next month, and is all fashionista and dying her hair and into Dirty Dancing and hot pink biker shorts.

**EW** To the biker shorts part.

I'm not creepy, I know all these little details because mini-Madonna is putting it all out there in the Material Girl blog under her own section Blog, Lola, Blog. It's cute how she's so into the '80's. Guess if your mom was Madonna you wouldn't have a choice, huh. WORSHIP ME, CHILD!!! I'm sure a Madonna time-out is on a whole other level. Like in a cage, or something. And that British-ish accent frightens me. Although that seems like it faded along with the memory of what's-his-name, dad#2.

Watching Lourdes makes me feel like I'm dreaming, and Madonna is in my dream only she's not quite Madonna, she's a Latina version. Hmmm, if I were Lourdes I would totally go as Guadalupe for Halloween. Is that blasphemous?

I adore Shakira. She's talented, my baby loooooves her songs, she's hot (see Loba video) and she seems like she'd be a nice person, right? So when I saw this on Guanabee -- a video of an 11-year-old Shakira performing on Colombian television I nearly choked on my coffee.

OMG, this is soooo stank -- the dress, hair, the eyeliner and those moves -- that it makes me like Shakira even more. I may just have to join her fan club. Or Facebook page. Or whatever you do to show fan affection nowadays.

Mostly, I think this video should give parents hope that their awkward little Latinitos will turn out to be fine adults! Of course, I've also considered that when this was shot, Shakira wasn't really awkward, but actually looked really good with that big hair. That's scary that that look could have ever passed as anything but stank. **shudder**

Gotta love it.

We bought this little marimba in Nicaragua last year. But okay, this picture of baby K "playing" the marimba was super hard to take because at this point, she doesn't really know how to handle the mallets. She gets that when you touch a piano key, it resonates with sound. But a marimba is just silent wood unless you bang on it with something hard.

We'll keep at it.

In the meantime, she really enjoys the tamborine, although I am apparently a horrible tamborine player. She also has maracas and a Schoenhut baby grand with a tiny baby-sized bench in her nursery, thanks to her madrina. And we have a regular upright piano that is mostly for decoration.

Hey, all we can do is expose her to music and musical instruments and maybe she'll gravitate toward something and latch on one day. And maybe she'll be the next Gustavo Dudamel and maybe one day she'll have her picture plastered all over bus stops in Los Angeles!

A parent can hope. En serio, he's an amazing role model -- we like him!

I was really, really tired and bleary-eyed when I trudged into DFW yesterday night on my way back to DC, but amazingly there was zero line at the American counter and just one person ahead of me at security. I felt like I was going through Tallahassee, or Laredo, or Baton Rouge's airports -- which have short lines, but not a single Starbucks, gasp!

Thank the coffee gods, there are plenty of Starbucks at DFW, and of course, chingos (the word my mom tells me is apparently my preferred word to say 'a lot') of Texas-themed gift shops. But there's also one at terminal C called South of Gate 6 -- like South of the Border, Mexican-theme, get it. But okay, I've been to this shop before. Sad when you remember the gift shops, but I remembered this was the shop where I saw the hand-made Mexican dolls. Maybe it was another South of gift shop, but whatever, who knew there was more than one. Airports screw with your tired mind like that.

I was actually surprised that this shop had a pretty good little collection of bilingual children's books, including this one by Jose Luis Orozco-- De Colores and Other Latin-American Folk Songs for Children -- which I bought for baby K.

I've seen this online but like I've said before, I think its so hard to buy books online. I like to sift through them first.

This book, I have to say, is a nice collection of songs, rhymes and hand games -- complete with the musical arrangement (for all the guitar heroes out there) and lyrics in English and Spanish. There's also little background info on the origin of the song. I also like the whimsical illustrations.

Some of the songs include: De colores; Los pollitos; Las mananitas; Sana, sana; El Coqui; Paz y libertad; Duermete, mi nino; La granja; etc. The one that's in here that baby K likes a lot is Los Elefantes. I've got a very annoying, high-pitched kid-singing version of it on my iphone. Baby K loves it -- that version -- so what's a mama to do? Play it again and again. I'm sure she gets just as annoyed listening to NPR.

I can only take about ten minutes of Pandora's Toddler Music Radio before I want to light my hair on fire and throw myself out the second floor window. The high-pitched voices and folk music combination is just too much for me.

Cri Cri, on the other hand, is a perfect compromise between my music and baby K's. It has that nice pre-50's orchestra feel, really Disneyish actually. Cri Cri is the singing cricket character by Francisco Gabilondo Soler, who was born in Mexico and had a popular radio show there in the '30's. I don't know too many of the songs, and the one I know best is "El Raton Vaquero." I've been doing this crazy skipping dance for baby K that makes her go crazy laughing and she tries to mimic it and falls. Again, I'm a babosa, and I dance like a babosa for the sake of making baby K happy.

You can find the songs and listen to the mp3s online here, then download the ones you like on iTunes or buy the CD on Amazon.

The first song baby K ever loved, I mean really shook her body down to the ground to was Shakira's Loba. I'm convinced Shakira is planting hidden baby tracks within her songs to get parents to play them nonstop to keep their kids happy. During the World Cup, Univision ran the Waka Waka musiquita over and over and over and over for a WHOLE MONTH and every time baby K would hear it in the background she'd shake it. No other singer moves baby K like Shakira, except maybe Stevie Wonder.

On the other hand, this video is enough to motivate me to get my rear into running mode. Total hotness, I'm jealous. Girl must do hours of yoga everyday, meanwhile I get cramps in my thighs from holding pigeon position for too long. Wah wah.

Auuuuu!