Maybe it's something you only do with your first-born, but we've been lugging around a full-on baby bag for the past year. There's everything in that bag -- bottles, diapers, wipes, a change of clothes, eating utensils, a thermometer, tylenol, throw-away paper bibs, cheerios, a juice box, apple sauce and some small toys to entertain baby K. I think we've been over-compensating ever since that day when she was two weeks old and we walked out of the house to a restaurant without any bag at all. Oops.

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.

The Los Angeles Dodgers owners have officially trademarked 'Los Doyers' -- which I say is a total nod to the huge Spanish-speaking population in LA, and a score for the Spanglish language. VinScullyIsMyHomeboy was the first to take note last week of the corporatization of the name, and turns out he was right on:

I saw something at Dodger Stadium last Wednesday that I had never seen before. Heck, maybe I'm late on this but this is new to me. As you know, you can buy a "Los Doyers" shirt at the local mall, at the L.A. streets, swap meets, Tyrone from Sunset blvd, anywhere.
What does "Los Doyers" mean? It just means "The Dodgers". Simple as that. If you ask my mom to say "Dodgers", she will say "Doyers".

And the Los Angeles Daily News explains the origins:

From our reference point, the phrase has been made popular by local sports-talk show host Petros Papadakis, who since his days on The Ticket 1540-AM liked to riff on the way Dodgers coach Manny Mota has pronounced the team's name for years.

I like Urban Dictionary's description best:

A common nickname for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Jokingly caught on because of the huge percentage of Mexican American fans. A purposeful mispronunciation which now appears on t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats and jackets. At any given game a huge portion of the audience is Mexican American or Latino.
Vamonos! Today is free blanket day. Let's go to the stadium and see Los Doyers play. I have free tickets!

So the question is, what happens to all the vendors who have been selling 'Los Doyers' t-shirts and other chingaderas for years? Does this mean no more 2 for $10 specials??? And where can I get a size 2T shirt for the little one???

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!

Right now, there's a baby gate that bars baby K from the kitchen. It's so sad when I'm cooking and there she is, hanging on to the bars crying and trying to get to me. Or to the dog's water and food bowls. Probably the latter.

Once baby K gets a little older I'm going to get her a little apron and put her to work. Like my sister-in-law tells my nephew -- earn your keep! This Dora and Diego Let's Cook cookbook just came out, and you can order it from Amazon. According to the product description its for ages 4 to 8. Perfect for me.

Here's more on the description:

Guided by Dora and Diego, kids will help measure, stir, shape, and decorate 50 exciting and super-tasty recipes like Pirate Adventure Pizza Coins and Incan Quinoa Pudding-all while learning Spanish words and phrases.

But seriously, I really, really enjoy cooking, but over the past year I have been on a downward spiral away from Martha Stewart-worthy experimenting to more of the randomly thrown-together Rachael Ray-type dinners. You know, the burger mac and cheese artichoke dip drenched in EVOO with a pinch of salt hot mess kinda meals. Sigh.

I need new cookbooks. Actually, what am I talking about? I've been using the Whole Foods recipe iPhone app a lot over the past year. Maybe Dora will get her own app, too! It's not beyond reason. There really is an app for everything. Everything -- when I was pregolicious, I had an iContraction app. Because when you're cringing in pain, the last thing you want to do is look at a clock and jot it down. C'mon Dora, help a mama out.

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 am traveling for work yet again -- this time in Dallas -- and it seems burgers are now officially my food of choice to quell my mama-missing-baby feelings. When I was in LA a few weeks ago I had an In-N-Out burger but wasn't really feeling it. It was aight, but didn't live up to the hype.

Now THIS was an excellent meal. And now I'm ready to head to the airport and go back to baby K. Baby K who learned to point to her nariz while I was away :( You'd drown your sorrows in a Whataburger too.

And it was goooooood!

We saw the documentary 'Babies' this weekend, and if you haven't seen it or heard about it the trailer should be enough to suck you in. Prepare to be intoxicated by the overwhelming cuteness.

The film follows four babies -- Ponjia from Namibia, Hattie from San Francisco, Mari from Tokyo and Bayarjargal from Mongolia -- from the time when they are helpless little blobs fresh from the oven until they are babbling, toddling, feisty and curious little humans. Their parents are just wallpaper in the film, which makes it all the better. The focus is on their faces, their reactions, their eye movement and little then bigger gestures. It's fascinating to watch.

I loved the scenes with Bayarjargal the best, especially where the goat sticks his head into the window and starts drinking from the bathwater. Or when el gallo mas gallo is walking along the edge of the bed where baby is lying. Or the older brother is literally whacking the helpless child with a scarf.

But I also realized how protective we are as parents and our jaws dropped every time we saw Ponjia pick up a piece of rock and start chewing on it. And we'd gasp every time she would crawl over powdery dirt and lick up a mouthful, and mom, who was always by this baby's side, wouldn't fret. Wouldn't even react. I mean, we live with two big peluche dogs that shed like crazy, so we are not exactly a model of a hyper-clean house. But we have baby-proofed. And I worry about things like pesticides on strawberries, and lead in the water and in ground from paint chips from old houses. We are beyond just trying to survive. We are fixated on helping our children thrive.

This film is a good reminder to keep it real. It ain't that deep. I mean it is, but it isn't.

So I need to remember:

The world is not sterile. That's a good thing.

We do not, should not live in a vacuum.

Exploring is natural. It's how we stumble upon amazing things.

The world has lots of beautiful things to offer: skies that change every moment, trees that clap their leaves when the wind runs through them, flowers that awaken your senses down to your fingertips.

Tune into the world.

Tune into what other mothers are doing across the globe at this very moment.

I'm sure most aren't fretting about hormone levels in milk.

I feel connected. Who needs the internet to figure out this baby thing anyway?

I am very blessed to have my baby, my Special K.

So it's finally happening -- the moment when baby K transitions from gibberish every now and again to having what seem like full-on gibberish conversations with inflection, with a few real words interspersed between. She points to her cup and says agua when she's thirsty. And says apple for apple, banana, nectarine or any fruit, really.

I've been listening closely to the gibberish and inflections, and wondering what its going to be when it finally synthesizes in her head. Spanish, or English? Most likely it's going to be Spanglish. As much as I want her to speak just Spanish right now, I know that's not going to happen. She spends all day with her grandma -- who speaks both languages to her -- and she Skypes a lot with her other grandparents in Miami -- puro espanol -- but when we get home from work I'd say we do about 75 percent English and 25 percent Spanish. This is not the way I want it to be, but when you've been working all day and communicating in English it's hard to just unplug and switch to Spanish. Nah, nah, nah I know that's just an excuse and here's another -- it's especially hard when you live in a city where there's not much of a Spanish-speaking population, so it's not like you're just gonna stop at the grocery store and bam, all Spanish. At least I'm not the only one in this situation.

But from here on out, I'm gonna make a conscious effort -- mas espanol!

One of my favorite websites to read up on raising baby bilingual is SpanglishBaby.com. Anyone have any good recommendations?

We all wore them--I had white huarachitos for Easter one year. Pink ones at some point in elementary. And I have some fabulous red huarache-inspired wedge shoes now. My husband is totally obsessed with minimalist running shoes now and if I tell him about these huaraches he'd probably make his own and start wearing the Jesus sandals. I didn't call them that--they did. I'm so inner circle on huaraches that never even crossed my mind.

Anyway, I haven't bought any huaraches for baby K just yet, and since summer is almost over and it's almost boots season (ugh, the south Texan in me cringes at the thought of that--not the boot part of course, the cold part) I'll probably just wait until next spring to get her a pair. Or maybe we'll brave sandals in December when I get her dressed up as Juan Diegito on Dec. 12. I already have the outfit!