Happy Birthday!

As of 10:22 p.m. tonight, I'll be the mother of a 30-year-old. For some reason, it just doesn't seem like Julia should be 30 -- time slips away so fast.

Here are a couple of pictures:
In the upper picture, Julia is the child at the top of the group. (And I wasn't nearly as overwhelmed as I look in that picture.)

And of course, she is the mother of the adorable little boy in the next picture. I think her sparkling personality shows in both pictures.

I remember that when she was born, I was very happy, and very unsure of myself. I was terrified of giving her a bath. The first morning, when the nurses brought her to me, I looked at her and realized I had no idea how to take care of a baby (and this was after reading every baby book I could get my hands on). But then I realized she had never been a baby before, so she didn't know what to expect. I found that to be a comforting thought -- I didn't have to live up to anyone else's expectations of perfection, I could just do my best and be Julia's mother. She seems to have survived.

Now she's a mom herself, and I'm enjoying this new phase of our relationship. And I'm very proud of her -- as a woman, a wife, a mom and a lawyer.

Happy Birthday Julia!

Support fair trade music: Vote for NoiseTrade

One of the best places to find music, NoiseTrade, is a finalist in the Mashable Open Web Awards. This is the second year that Mashable has recognized the 26 best web startups and services. They are competing with Last.fm and Pandora in the Music category. This is huge and it's time to show your support for NoiseTrade and the idea of fair trade music.

You can vote here, and you can vote again with a different e-mail address -- once per category per address every 24 hours. I think I've posted about NoiseTrade before -- one of the people behind it is Derek Webb and the site includes a growing number of artists offering their music in an innovative setting. Very cool, so show your support until Dec. 14.