Ok y'all, my nephew decided to take.it.slow. He has not arrived, and my cute sister and her husband continue to walk miles around the hospital in Florence. She had so hoped for a Halloween baby, but when that day passed, we thought, Ok, November 1. How wonderfully alliterative and neat is 11/1!! Indeed, Elia's water broke this morning, but then no dice, and so 11/2 it likely will be. Via FaceTime, I attempted to sell Elia and her hubs on the marvelous mathematical nature of 11/2 because, obviously, 1+1=2. They were like, "Seriamente, sorella. Tu sei pazza." Ok, ok. Maybe it's just me because my birthday, 4/16, is so mathematically neat too. 4x4=16!! This is as mathematically adept as I get, so it could be that limitation too.

I pushed a bit, and Elia was like, "Man, November 2 is The Day of the Dead in Italy. Like, people walk around with bouquets of flowers to lay at their relatives' graves." Hmm. Ok, I can still work with this I thought.

We said goodbye, and T and I then tried to find a list of famous people born on November 2 because perhaps a great celebrity coincidence would make 11/2 seem beyond grand. If, for example, Benedict and I shared a birthday, that would be A-MAZing. We don't. He was born in July for the love.

Anyway, famous people. We really struck out in this pursuit. Marie Antoinette and Daniel Boone are decent, but she was guillotined and kind of a wench, and he is fairly forgettable. All in all, they're B-list at best.

So what about important events? Wonderful happenings? Some of those would be swell.

The best we could find was that BBC TV was rolled out on 11/2 in 1936. On that very same day in the very same year, however, Mussolini proclaimed the Rome-Berlin axis, so that's really a wash at best, yes? Later on 11/2, the South Vietnamese president was assassinated, and later still, David Schwimmer was born.

So.... moral of the story is: the day is yours, my darling nephew. It is wide the eff open just for you. I dare say that by virtue of being a fabulous Ital0americani boy you will surpass all the rest. We can't wait to meet you!