Tomorrow I will be sixteen weeks along - four months!  It has been a strange journey so far --exciting, worrisome, hopeful, fearful, and overall wonderful.   I am starting to trust and feel your existence more.  Sometimes I even think I feel you move around.  It is still to early to really tell, but there have been a few flutters down there that make me wonder.   And, soon we will find out if you are a girl or a boy.  To be honest, I don't have any feeling either way.  Your father and I genuinely are only desiring that you are healthy and hearty.  Your sex does not matter to us.  You are who you are!  

It will take you many years for you to understand the importance of the year that you will be born in but it is a truly historic year.  2009 marks the first year of an administration headed by the first elected African American president.  Your father and I were so thrilled and moved by this historic election.  In fact, you were there in the voting booth with me floating unaware in your amniotic fluid.  Not only is this election significant for breaking a major racial barrier, it is also significant for the fact that your country has elected a leader who is extremely intelligent, articulate, wise, and generous.  He has re-ignited hope in a country who has been beaten down by the short sighted and cynical politics of the Bush administration.  I do believe that leaders such as Barack Obama only come around every hundred years or so.  We are truly blessed to have him at such a dire time.  Yes, little ducky, you are being born at a time of great unrest.   A hopeful time to be sure in terms of new social and policy changes but also very frightening in terms of the level of economic distress that has hit this country hard.  People are losing their homes and jobs left and right.   We are officially in a recession.  Our fat and naive consumer driven generation may, for the first time really, begin to experience scarcity.  Don't worry though.  Your father and I are resourceful people.  And, we have a lot of love for each other to help us get through anything.  We will be fine.  And, if anything we will learn creative ways to handle difficult times.  These skills will come in handy.  That's it for now little one.  Looking forward to a kick!