Happy Inauguration Day!

Today Barack Obama was inaugurated as our 44th president.  E was due November 3rd, and I lost my mucus plug on election day.  E arrived two days later.  Paul and I often joke that she had to wait to see the election results, and make sure they stuck, before she came out.  Had McCain won, I would probably still be pregnant. 

The Tigard Library hosted a viewing of the inauguration, so I packed up the Belchigator and we drove there to view it on the big screen.   It's hard to describe how I feel about this day.  I'm excited for our future as a country because I think that after 8 years, we finally have a competant president.  But more than that, I'm excited for my daughter to spend the next four, and hopefully eight years growing up in a country where, as a middle schooler from Atlanta said today, "Black people on the news will no longer all be bad guys."  It makes me proud to raise my child in a country where that same kid can say that he wants to be president when he grows up, and know that it's truely possible.  It makes me proud to raise my child, knowing that when she is my age, a black, or brown, or yellow or female president will be no longer be "history in the making," but natural and expected.

E slept through the whole thing, just like she slept through her baptism.  I tried to wake her up to see her new president, but she was not interested.  There was a man at the event with a good camera who took a picture of her with Obama giving his inaugural speech on the TV screen in the background.  I can't wait to see it.  That will be one for the baby book.  I've already printed out the transcripts of his speech and of the poem (written and read by another E) to put into her baby book.

In the midst of my pregnancy, Paul & I often wondered what kind of world we were bringing a child into.  We thought that we might have made a poor choice in bringing a child into the world -- that it was unfair to bring a child into this mess.  Today, I feel blessed that I have a child born in the era of Obama, and I hope that things get better for her, and every child in the country, and the world.

Barack and Roll, Baby!!