Notaly no more... now it is Yitaly!

For those of you who have been listening to my whining session about not being able to take a trip to Europe pre-"beginning my uber responsible parental life", ha ha... I shall whine no more. In a moment of jest, I went as far as to declare that our first born, should it be a girl, would be named Notaly (secret code for "Not Italy"). Now our collective reproductive organs have a 4 month timer put on them, as we are going to Italy this winter. Hurray, hurrah! I don't have to grow up yet!

We have discovered that by adding "Bella" before each noun and "ay" to the end of the noun, we speak quite passable Italian. For example, "Honey, please pass the "bella remotay!". (Translation: Pass the remote.) Our Italian is enhanced greatly by vivid arm gestures with no correlation to the topic of the sentence. It's been easier to learn Italian than I thought it would have been.

Yesterday, we loaded up our backpacks (tres chic!) with 25 pound weights and hiked a mile in a local park in the midst of several speed walking retirees who thought the backpacks were an interesting addition to our ensemble. So, we are in practice for the trip. When we passed a group of trees, I would yell, ""We're late for our train. Run!" We had to imagine the slice of pizza in our hand as we ran of course. Later, I will bring the pizza to the park with us so that we can practice for real.

Now we are watching Lalympics (Burtonese for Olympics) and enjoying most of it. I am working on my floor exercise for the 2012 Lalympics during commercials. I am surprisingly graceful. Our cat is my biggest fan.