The Fantastic Four

Dante turned 4 today and instead of celebrating with a big party (too much for big pregnant mommy right now to handle) we took him to his Sibling Class at the hospital in order to prepare him in becoming a big brother in about 9 days.

He enjoyed the class immensely and did a pretty good job with the tasks at hand like answering questions about hygiene, what babies like to do (he answered oh-so-eloquently that "they like to go pee pee and poopy in their diapers"), and showed great promise in feeding and holding the baby.



He may need some work on changing and dressing the baby.


We then had our traditional birthday lunch at Sweet Tomatoes with the family followed by presents and a super cool Transformers cake at Nonna and Nonno's house.

Many gifts involving swords, shields, dragons and knights were experienced along with a visit from Sir Dante of Dania, dragon slayer.




A good day was had by all. I can't believe my baby is 4.

A Tough Act to Follow

Now that we know our next child is a boy, we are having a tough time following up our first son's name with an equally powerful and meaningful title for boy #2.

Our son's name is Dante Marcello. Dante, after the famous medieval author Dante Alighieri, and Marcello after my father.

Logically one can't follow up a name like that with something like "Jimmy" or "Steve" or "Bobby" (no offense if anyone has those names), so I've been scouring my favorite literary authors and works to find the perfect name that can match in awesomeness to our firstborn.

Boy is this tough. Do we go Italian again? Do we venture to the English kings? Knights of the Round Table? Renaissance Painters? The Musketeers? Philosophers and Great Thinkers? Greek and Roman Myths? Norse myths? Dare I say, biblical?!? Do we simply flip the name book, stick our finger in, and go with what we are pointing at (not a good choice, since when we did that we landed on "Englebert").

We may have an idea for a first name, but now what? Do we have to come up with a middle? I don't have a middle name, so why should we?

Dante has given us two suggestions: Spinwheel and Baby Junior. Right now, those two don't seem that bad.