Is it a boy or a girl?

In two days, my blog will be 9 months old, and even though I know that pregnancy actually lasts 9.5 months, the 9-month mark seems significant. In honor of the end of gestation, I am featuring a post from my first week of development, ambitiously titled "I Have an Idea for Jay-Z's Next Album." This ill-advised title is evidence that I'm still secretly competing with my friend who writes for Vibe.

It's a fairly one-sided competition.

Anyway, I bought a batch of CDs using the review resources in my word-to-Jay-Z post, and I'm now happy to report on which are the most popular:

1. Buzz, Buzz by Laurie Berkner. Laurie Berkner falls into the chipper folkie category, which makes her slightly less annoying than the robot children category.

2. No! by They Might Be Giants. Yes, there is a hipster parent contingent in my neighborhood.

3. Music for Little Ears: Authentic Lullabies from Around the World. This one, I love. It's soft, rhythmic, and takes you down deep. There are also English translations of all the songs.

And based on a recent surge, I expect great things from these in 2008:

1. Soy Una Pizza by Charlotte Diamond. OK, don't be scared by the cover. I know she's like "Hold still while I shove this pizza down your throat!" But she's actually very tame. The songs on this one are a perfect mix of the familiar and the predictable. Learn 'em in a snap whether you speak Spanish or not.

2. African Playground by Putumayo. It's African, it's playful, it's probably playing at a coffee store near you ... what's not to love?

And then there's my favorite, even if it's not exactly circing up a storm .... for future Broadway stars and aspiring Von Trapps ... introducing the charming, the endearing, the darling, the winking, only slightly wrinkled John Lithgow (!!) and his show-stopping pick-me-up: The Sunny Side of the Street. Real Broadway tunes discretely tailored for the petite.

It meets my top 3 criteria for good kids CDs: 1) no robot children, 2) clever lyrics--but not the kind that go over kids' heads, like this horrible offender, and 3) swinging sing-a-long-ability.

Let's see some jazz hands, people.