It is with great pleasure that I introduce to the world Elizabeth Lynne Riley, born Saturday, Nov 29th, at 5:41am. She is 8 lbs 4 oz, and is (according to her father — and why would he lie?) the most beautiful baby ever.
It’s hard for most of us to realize just how much this little girl will see, (and how much she has missed.) VHS tapes and photo processing will be completely unknown to her. The internet will be as invisible in her life as electricity, the telephone and the TV are for us old-timers. And the only President Bush she is likely to remember will be Jeb.
I hope we can get this dirty work out of the way before she is old enough to know what we are talking about. I hope that Iraq will have always been a free and prosperous ally in her world — in the same way that Japan and Germany were for me. And I fervently hope that by the time she is old enough for college, we will have professors who have learned the difference between constructive criticism and blind hatred.
Those things, the unimaginable technological miracles that she will witness, and the free and prosperous country she will inherit, are not going to happen by magic, folks. We’re going to have to work for them — just like we always have. I do know one thing, though. I know her mother and father. And I know that this new little person is not going to be taking any of that for granted.
Congratulations, Mom and Dad. The easy part is over! Now the real work begins!
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