Eric Martin - The blog, projects and photography of Eric Martin

How's everyone in Flickrland? Things are pretty crazy with 3 kids, a relatively new job, and the holidays around the corner...

Hope all is well!

Free desktop and mobile wallpapers of this photo can be found at Beyond the Focus.

On St. Patrick's Day, Luke turned 1!

It has been an amazing, emotional, sleep-deprived year, but I wouldn't change a moment of it!

I had planned on doing a 52-week project for his first year, but it never quite worked out ;)

Taken for week 11 of Assignment52.

Last Thursday afternoon, my wife accidentally tripped and fell on our youngest son, Luke (11mo), causing a depressed skull fracture on the right side of his head. She rushed him to the ER where they took a CAT scan and determined that, besides the indentation, there was no other damage (the bone was intact, no damage to the brain or any bleeding).

They transfered Luke by ambulance from Sutter Roseville down to Sutter Memorial (in Sacramento) so he could be seen by the best pediatric neurologists in the area. After being told at the ER that the skull would probably just reshape itself (because he is so young), we found out Friday morning that the neurologist wanted to do surgery to fix it.

So, Friday at around 3pm, Dr. Ciricillo performed an elevation of the depressed skull fracture. The procedure lasted less than 30 minutes.

This picture was taken while he was in the anesthesia recovery room. He had his bunny and fingers for comfort. He is the only one of our 3 boys that is a finger sucker. It must be hereditary though, because both my mom and I sucked the same two fingers when we were young ;)

Anyway, he is home now and resting. It could have been so much more serious, so we are very thankful that after a relatively minor surgery, he's all fixed up and on his way to a quick recovery.

We are spending the next two days at home, enjoying food, family, and all of the new presents.

2010 has been an eventful year. An attempted 365, a new baby, and lots of new memories.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

~ The Martins

The moment I took this picture, it became one of my all-time favorites. I love everything about it, including his genuine smile.

One of the tricks we've learned to get the kids to smile (and not the fake kind) is to say something really obnoxious. For example, I think I said something about "passing gas", and this was the expression I got. With 3 boys, the grosser, the better :D

Here's a photo of Cooper from a little over 2 years ago ~ I can't believe how fast they grow up. He lost his first tooth yesterday and woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to see what the Tooth Fairy left him.

Santa and the Tooth Fairly all in one week!

I haven't posted in a while and the last time I posted a picture in the "52 Weeks of Luke" series was back in April :(

So, I thought it was time to show off our little guy in this adorable crochet brown teddy bear hat found on Etsy.

This picture was taken on Thanksgiving in Petaluma, CA.

Another photo from our Chico trip. This was taken on the front steps of the administration building (Kendall Hall) on the Chico State campus.

It's not easy to get all 3 together for a photo, especially in good moods...so we are really happy to have been able to get this! Added a bit of texture for some fun.

Last weekend we went up to Chico to visit with Max and his family, who were also there visiting.

Although it rained most of the day, we had a great time visiting our favorite places and reminicing about the years we spent in Chico. After Max left, we took the boys to Bidwell Park to play at Caper Acres; a fun little playground for the kids to play before we headed back home.

This was a random shot where I just stuck the camera close to the grass and "blindly" took a shot. I really liked the way it turned out, so I thought I'd share.

Another photo from Cooper's first day of school. This was taken before we left.

As the first week of Kindergarten comes to an end, the emotion and significance of it all is starting to set in. He's a big boy now, and he is starting his journey through life and the process of becoming independent from us.

I am very proud of him and excited for him to start his journey. I may not be ready, but I know he is.

In the US, the average number of days a child attends school is 180. Assuming he at least makes it through High School, that's 13 years for a total of 2340 days of school. As of today, 4 down, 2336 left to go :D

Yesterday was Cooper's first day of Kindergarten...it's hard to believe how quickly they grow up.

The drop-off went well. His teacher let all of the parents stay for the first 20-30 minutes while she met everyone and let the kids warm up. Given that we had all 3 kids and Cooper kept telling us how boring this school was, there wasn't any time to get sentimental about the event. The teacher even read "The Kissing Hand", which could have been a tear-jerker.

Before we know it, he'll be asking for keys to the car...