This really should surprise noone.

It's a little before 10am on friday. I'm sitting here wondering how it's 10am and I've got no billable hours in even though I've technically been up for almost 4 hours now. Let's review:

• 6am - got Baby Shane out of crib (note to babyshane: 6am is NOT COOL) dressed, fed and handed off to tpd to drop off early today.
  
  
• 6:45am - Babygirl is up (another note: this time, while more acceptable still does not fit into my approved toddler wake up time) and I get her dressed and up.
  
  
• 7:15am -Bridget and I leave to go get donuts since today is BS's last day in the infant room (sniff, sniff) - he graduates to the toddler room on Monday! So, we decide a Friday morning teacher appreciation Krispy Kreme donut run is in order.
  
  
• 7:30 am - Krispy Kreme. They are - no lie- out of donuts. Now, to be fair, their donut making machine is on the "fritz", but still... REALLY Krispy Kreme, REALLY?! Maybe we need to call in a 911 donut machine emergency and get it the f*ck fixed, but whatever, they still had a few sprinkled donuts left so Bridget was fine and we managed to leave with enough for the teachers at school. Sorry to all the poor suckas behind us that would get NO DONUTS FROM A DONUT STORE. As we left (we had to of course sit and eat a donut) they were actually turning people away empty handed.
  
  
• 8:30am - Back home from dropping off Bridget and ready to get to work. I finally make it up to my office, sit down with my fresh KK coffee (they weren't out of coffee luckily) start checking/responding to email when a little black kitty catches my eye. Oh! Could this be the black kitty that I've seen signs for all over the area? Probably not.. but what if... it gnaws at me to the point that I can't take it anymore. I'll spare you the ridiculous details, but 45 minutes of kitty tracking and one car ride to find the sign with the owners number and I'm finally back in my office. The kitty wanted nothing to do with me so the owner was going to take over the kitty tracking even though it was hard for me not to see it through. Currently, as of press time there is still no reunion, but I'll keep you posted.
  
  
• 9:25am -Back in the office ready to work. I hear a truck coming up the street (insert lightbulb) "shit, shit, the kidney foundation - I'm supposed to have had my stuff out by 6am... shit" Sprint down to the basement randomly start going through 85 boxes for anything I can donate. Grab two random bags of clothes and a basketball hoop thingy (?!) run up the driveway only to see that's not the right truck. Phew. Cut to me on my porch going through bags of clothes (I realize one of the bags is actually my summer clothes from the summer before I had Bridget) and I start saving random *still good* items just as a hear another truck and sure enough that's the Kidney foundation. The guy catches me hunched over pulling clothes out of my donation bags. The worst part is, there was still more good stuff in there, but I was too embarrassed to let him watch me pull crap out so I only made off with one jean skirt and red cardinals shirt.
  
  
• 9:55am - Brings us to now - instead of going back to work, I just spent another 15 minutes telling you all how I've frittered my morning away and, oh! Black kitty ALERT! She's back on my neighbor's doorstep. Gotta run....

Not even a cake as big as Montana could stop this girl!

I'm so so late in giving proper props to my most adorable niece on her 1st big birthday! I would blame it on the 87 illnesses making their way through my household this month (which, btw, wtf May?) but let's face it, this is most likely a case of inborn Jones procrastination, always thinking I'll have time to get it done and then never quite getting it done before the deadline. Sound familiar Mark?

Anyway, last week was a very BIG week for Miss Amelia. I can't believe (I know it's cliched) but I really can't that it was a whole year ago that I posted this. What a night...oh man, what a night - you're totally humming that tune now aren't you? Well, if you weren't before, you're welcome now. Anyway, that night was so awesome. My emotions ranged from complete and utter disbelief to complete and utter edge of your seat can't sit still anticipation. I still feel bad I wasn't more excited initially when Kim called to tell me she thought her water just broke, but in my small defense, I was in a newborn sleeplessness haze myself when I got the news and I just couldn't wrap my head around it! I mean, she wasn't supposed to come for 4 more weeks, how could she be on her way - was all I could think. That whole night I texted back and forth with Kim (while in labor, I might add!) and had the best sleepless night ever knowing I would soon have a niece or nephew. Right before I got the news I was in the middle of a dream about the baby who was born perfect and beautiful and it was a girl. I still remember it so vividly to this day. So when the phone rang at 6am that morning, I knew SHE was here, even before my brother officially said it. To this day, that's still one of my favorite all time experiences. Some day I'll tell you about the other ones.

In the past year I've watched that teeny-tiny, little baby girl - who I so excitedly/loudly told the McDonald's drive thru lady the morning of her birth, "I'm going to meet my NIECE today, she was just born 3 hours ago - FOUR WEEKS EARLY, but everything's fine and she's PERFECT!!!" - grow from that little beautiful bean in the hospital into a wildly vivacious spirit. She is so full of wonder and spirit and determination - gosh, that babygirl is driven... a good mix of Mark's sticktuitiveness and Kim's drive. She is the happiest, sweetpea (as her mom would say and I think it fits her perfectly) of a babygirl most times, but can also hold her own with the big boys. I just know she is going to keep giving her cousins Shane (and soon enough Bridget) a run for their money.


So, Miss A, it's been an awesome first year being your Aunt and I can't wait to see you walk, talk, run after the big kids and everything in between - and just think - that will happen this year! I know I'll blink and be posting about how much you've changed this year, so I'm going to keep holding on to today's details and embracing tomorrow's new ones! You will always have my heart as my first Niece, and although someday I'll be more than happy to share that love, right now it's all yours babygirl - I love you! And don't ever forget that while your mommy will hook you up with cakes 3 times the size of your head, Aunt Erin's always got your back when it comes to burritos that size.

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HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, Amelia!

Should I ask for my Cascading Style Sheets back?

I've tried to write this post 10 times now and keep going back, not even knowing where to start. Today was one of the hardest days I've had over the course of my professional career. None of had to do with too many deadlines or 8 different clients needing something right THIS second (the usual hard days like, oh you know, every third day) - this was different. This was all about being treated with respect, fairness and professionalism. The interesting thing is, while I keep replaying the events of the meeting where things went so horribly wrong over and over like some bad loopy old time movie the ending is the same: I did good. I should be proud.

I was completely railroaded today, thrown under the bus for completely bogus and unfair reasons, the likes of which I don't even want to get into, but it was awful. I was talked down to, yelled at and even had the worst analogy known to man thrown in my face. We're talking Apples to Volkswagens here, people. You see it's like this, friends - imagine that Pujols is the client and I'm -shit I can't even think of a Cardinal pitcher right now -but I'm the pitcher and I throw a slider to him and he swings and doesn't even hit the pitch ANYWHERE NEAR OR IN THE ANALOGY BALLPARK - that is how bad this analogy was! Ah! See how I just used a terrible analogy to describe the worst analogy ever - I'm so crafty like that - who wouldn't hire me?!

Basically, today I went toe to toe with a man with over 40 years experience in business, apparently none of them in professionalism or honorable business, BUT, 40 years nonetheless and I DID NOT let him steamroll me. I was caught somewhat off guard, but I had that little gut feeling this might be coming. Like when a girl is starting to realize that he just may not be that into you, but you keep coming up with reasons why it's still ok. The fact is, I had learned of some circumstances that might lead to him trying to get out of a contract with me. But, here's the thing, I probably would have understood. Be honest, be upfront with me - give me the same professional respect I've always given you. Tell me the real deal. But, DO NOT make me feel like I'm not doing my job so you can slink away under the table and give someone else (who may or may not happen to be your son) business.

I've been lucky. My clients are awesome. I've created lasting personal relationships with the majority of them and I will miss two of the people at this company more than I should in a client/service provider relationship, but that's how I roll. I invest personally in these businesses, I watch out for them, I get involved, I know their kids, their grandkids, what college so and so just graduated from. So, a day like this was more disheartening than anything today. I've been with them for almost 10 years and I walked away, I said I couldn't work with someone that would talk to me and treat me like that. 10 YEARS and I've never broken up with a client like I did today and it seems all too familiar to other personal past breakups. Think I'm exaggerating? I'm sitting here at 11:30pm, listening to sad songs on pandora, blogging about something people don't care about, eating snacks and drinking a beer. What is wrong with me?! I'm full of ickiness (yeah, that's right - ickiness) and all I keep doing is trying to remind myself that I did absolutely nothing wrong and everything right by this company. But, the sadness is still there - the ladies cried when they hugged me (twice each) and walked me out - CRIED, asked me not to go. It was really very awful and yet if I separate myself from it, it's almost laughable. I didn't make much money from this client, I worked with them MAYBE once a month, but that is how much I care about these businesses I work for.

I'm trying to remind myself of the strength and confidence I had today, something the Custom Web Erin of 10 years ago couldn't have even fathomed, but no matter which way I cut it, today was painful and unfair and I think I better go eat some bon-bons now, cause dumping one of my clients has turned out to be a little harder than it should be.

So, internet peeps, got advice? A good therapist? Gallons of wine? What do I need to do to feel better about this?

And I mostly wondered how many people noticed the toilet wasn't clean...

Well, it's taken me a full week to recap the baby's big 1st birthday weekend, but here it is. I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats.

The weekend started out awesome, baby shane was feeling better and back at school (hallelujah!) after being home sick for two days with a fever and double ear infections. I had one day to try and get caught up on work and pull off a miracle backyard birthday party, which, trust me, had you seen our house/backyard 24 hours earlier you would wholeheartedly believe in miracles.

Friday night, somewhere between the basement cleaning and the dominoes order, the guest of honor decided to wake up screaming. Long story short: all the screaming, inconsolability (is that even a word) and the fact that he had a low body temperature, land us in the E.R. Why this has happened twice when Aunt Meme is staying with us on the eve of a major event (Christmas Eve was the last time we were in the E.R.) is interesting to say the least and enticing me to put a ban on her staying here anymore and major holidays in general! Just kidding, Aunt Meme - you are very helpful and then we didn't have to worry about Bridgey so that was nice!

When all is said and done at the hospital (the new one in Fenton by the way - very nice, well, that is if you subtract the blood that was on the floor in our room - I know, I can't even think about it anymore) it is determined that the ear infections had gotten much worse even after 3 solid days of antibiotics. The doc at the hospital rates them a 10 on the severity scale...out of 10! ouch! Fast forward to 3:17 am, everyone is back from the hospital and tucked in to bed for what will hopefully be some nice hours of sleep... and eyes close... and 6:07am EYES OPEN.... Baby hollering, won't calm down again... Two pain relievers and a trip to starbucks later he's better and we determine it's time to give up on sleep and that we better start getting this place ready for a party.

I'm not sure how we pulled it off, but we did and it looked halfway like a birthday party - mostly thanks to this AWESOME cake by my friend from high school. SIDENOTE: If you ever need an awesome cake, email me and I'll hook you up with her. In the end, Baby/Toddler(?) Shane had a good time and rebounded to open some presents and try the cake...sort of.. and then it was off to bed for the birthday boy for some much needed post hospital/party rest! :) It was certainly a first birthday party to remember (or forget)! We definitely missed Grandma and Uncle Mark who, unbelievably, were at home with ear infections themselves. Guess they aren't quite as tough as the birthday boy (again, just kidding!)

I'm posting a few highlight pics here, but most will be up on my picasa/facebook accounts! PS - anyone else who has some, let me know as I'm seriously going to make a 1st birthday book for him. No, really, stop laughing, I mean it.

Lastly, in wrapping up the big 1 of my #2, I just wanted to highlight things that I notice about him right now. Read: majorly boring for most everyone so you can feel free to skip this part, but I like capturing these details!

• Baby Shane, we still call you that and while I'm seeing it phase out a little, I have a feeling you might still be referred to as BS occasionally even when your 24.

• You freaking LOVE any and every kind of ball. You have a borderline out of control ball obsession. You flap your little hands back and forth feverishly and omit a high pitched shrieking sound when you see a ball, hear one bounce, hell, probably even when you think of one - which might explain the random shrieking and hand flapping that comes out of nowhere. (Just kidding, don't worry mom.)

• You LOVE your sister. Like no one else. She can make you smile almost every time. AND THE LAUGHING. Oh my god, the laughing. I have never been able to amuse you as much as she can and I have to say, that's very disappointing. You'd think I'd be able to pull out a few more humorous stops than a 2 year old, but that's not the case.

• You are very clingy to me right now. And while I secretly love that fact, it does break my heart everytime I have to drop you off at daycare or leave you with someone and you start crying and reaching for me. That is not fun, but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless and wonder how long it will last.
  

• You have an infectious smile. All I have to do is look at you most times and you get that big toothy grin. You really are the most gorgeous 1 year old little person on the planet.
  
  
• You like to feed yourself, but if you don't like something, it will come right back out immediately. The face that accompanies the dislike is akin to how I look and feel when Ann Curry says something stupid, so I get it. It must be REALLY BAD.
  
  
• You already seem to know when you are doing something wrong. You look at me with this little over the shoulder grin, like, 'how long am I going to get away with this for, mom'? And then you try it again and again each time upping the cuteness factor just a tad bit more seeing if I'll cave then. Those poor girls in your future. They are going to be in trouble with you, I can just tell. Rachel, fair warning, watch out for this one, he's crafty.
  

• You are still my baby. You like to snuggle and I still like to hold on to every minute of every snuggle.

You ROCK and we love you baby boy.
Happy first year, beautiful boy.

To ensure a video overload, I've decided to just go ahead and make three...

For my second video feat, a quick recap of Baby Shane's (first) First Birthday Celebration Friday night at Happy Joe's. Yes, I said Happy Joe's. Yes, I know he's only one. I have really fond birthday memories from that place, okay? So, I don't want to hear any HJ backtalk!

For my Beautiful Boy

through joy, tears, sleep, sleeplessness, grins, giggles, fits, firsts and fun...
it's been an awesome first year with you!

Happy FIRST birthday, beautiful boy.