01.20.09 ~ Monumental Inauguration Day

I cried this morning watching officers salute Barack Obama walking through the hallway to the Inaugural podium. This is an enormously meaningful event for me because my sons will grow up in a new era, never having to know the prejudice or discrimination they may have experienced had they been born in my birth year of 1968. Like Barack Obama, my sons have a white mother and a black father. Today they are inaugurated into a brand new United States where they can call themselves americans not african americans. 

For a formerly self-admitted political ignorant, it is huge that I not only watched all the debates, but actually fought tooth and nail through baby defiance to do so. Noah was a newborn and his witching hour landed splat during the pinnacle of every debate, so I  had to bounce him outside the living room door on our porch, straining to  hear anything the candidates said over his screams. But I got to watch come hell or high water. Noah was a bit older and more well adjusted to the planet by the time the McCain debates came along, so it was much easier to make out the speaking points. Not that it really mattered to me all that much. Admittedly due to my political ignorance on the issues, I was much more aware of each candidate's facial expressions and body language than the content of their dialogue. So by performing my well-practiced multi-tasking skills I could intermittently glimpse the debate and distract two boys just fine.  By the time election night came, both boys were peacefully asleep, so Charles and I got the pleasure of snuggling up on the floor in front of the TV when Obama's victory was announced. 

Today the boys and I snuck out of the apartment early to our complex' fitness center while daddy was sleeping and watched the initial live coverage of motorcades parading and people flooding the National Mall. When we came home to wake up daddy for the main event, he was already dancing around the living room in his underwear with a sparkle in his eye I will never forget. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets that man out of bed early. But Barack Obama's Inauguration did! We actually got to watch the whole thing together as a family. Gabriel made it all the way until about 7 minutes into Obama's speech, at which point he chose Miss Spider's Bug a Boo Day DVD over the coverage. Noah made it a couple more minutes before he went down for his first easy-to-put-down, long-lasting nap in an exhausting week of illness and shitty, wakeful sleep. Guess he needed a little zzzzzz time to process the magnitude of today's events. :))