Post-Election Update

We've been so busy since the last update, it's hard to know where to begin. The dominating thing, of course, has been the series of events that we held for the Election - a school program, 2 big parties throughout Election Night, and a post-Election breakfast. I managed to sneak home for a few hours on Election Night, to get a quick nap and watch at least some of the returns with Tim, before dashing back downtown for the breakfast. All in all, we hosted more than 3700 people at Embassy-sponsored Election events on November 4 and 5, with excellent national media coverage of our programs and a huge response from our contacts.

I find it hard to put into words yet the emotions I've been feeling since the election results came in. As usual, Tim's done a much better job of summing it up: the "what are you doing now?" line on his Facebook profile now reads "Timothy Klitz will be able to raise his baby in a better world now." (I think much of the reputation I'm developing for effective public speaking is owed to the fact that I get to refine my ideas and arguments with Tim.) We're much more excited about moving back to Washington next year - it will be an interesting time to be there.

Speck seemed to enjoy all the madness, though. I've been able to feel him/her move for a while now, but it's getting much more noticeable in the past 2 weeks. I've learned that Speck loves it when I walk, gets super-excited when I run, and does not appreciate it when I forget to sit like a pregnant woman and instead curl up on the couch, cramping his/her world in the process. This will be a moot point in a few more weeks; I'm getting bigger by the week (by the hour?) We've already had a few laughs at the inherent comedy of pregnancy: watching me get up off the couch or out of the car is pretty funny.

We had our regular check-up today, at the start of Week 21, and both Speck and I are doing fine. We got some neat ultrasound images, which I hope are clear enough to scan; the printer on our doctor's ultrasound machine is a bit hit-or-miss. But as always, we had a great time watching the baby moving around. Today s/he was exploring his/her hands with his/her mouth, or vice versa. Who knows what s/he will be up to on our next ultrasound, which will be in 2 weeks??