Jazz Teeth

Our VERY FIRST family photo!Snapshot of Emery at four months: recovered from UTI, recovered from two teeth rocketing through his gums, sleeping pretty well, eating like a goat, smiling at everyone, staring at everything, and drooling ferociously. Sometimes I walk into a room and see him drooling and wonder if someone just threw a water balloon at him. See the latest pics of Emery by clicking here!

Leah and I have been really busy with photography work and teaching. My classes at Eastern are going well, but as many of you know, grading thirty-four essays can be a long and tedious process. The students are great, though, and they are learning to write better. That's the goal, I guess.

Click to enlargeWe've been doing a lot of family photography this season, as our clients prepare for Christmas cards, gifts, etc. It's always fun to see these families year after year, and to meet new ones who get referred to us by our regular clients. This has definitely been the busiest year we've had for our photography business. Lots of weddings, lots of families, and more nonprofit clients than previous years. Business is good.

But working from home and caring for a baby is not easy! To help keep us sane, we've hired a babysitter, Grace, to come for at least ten hours per week. And a friend of ours watches Emery on Thursdays for a while. That gives us time to catch up a little. We've definitely become more efficient workers. Every minute counts!

Day 1 of Operation Tooth SproutThe biggest news in Emery's life is that he's got two new teeth sprouting! They were born early this past week, and he's trying them out on anything that he can grab and lift and squeeze into his little mouth.

On Fridays, we sometimes go to Art After Five at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Turns out Emery likes jazz! Here's some video of our trip from last night:

Emery attends Art After Five, the Museum of Art's weekly jazz concert.

Rollin'

Thanks for all the prayers and emails and calls and food (the calzones were awesome, Kendra-n-Adam)! Emery's doing much better now. The antibiotics do mess with his stomach a little, which makes him fussy at times, but other than that, he's totally back to normal!

In other news, Emery learned to roll over last week. It's so funny to see him add these little skills to his arsenal. At three months, it seemed like he was so far away from rolling over. Then by three-and-a-half months, he had it figured out. Now we can't just plop him on the couch while we make dinner or run to the store.

Here's a VERY short video of his somewhat new skill in action.

Emery rolls over. Yes, at one point it was a big deal in your life, too.

Sickness

Thanks for all the prayers and well-wishes!

Most of you know that four days ago (Thursday), Emery was diagnosed with H1N1. He was spitting up a lot and suffering from a high fever. Especially at night, with temps up to 104. Then early Sunday morning, we woke up to find him throwing up pretty badly and working on a temperature of 106!

We rushed him to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia emergency room, where doctors began running some not-so-comfortable tests. That's when they discovered that his fever was caused by a urinary tract infection. The poor guy has had blood drawn, a catheter, a chest x-ray, and several other tests that were not fun even though they helped solve the riddle of his never-ending fever.

They began some antibiotics, and his fever has settled back to normal for the first time in days. He's happy and healing. Check out these videos and photos if you have time!

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS HERE...

This first video was taken when Emery had a temperature of 103:

This second video shows Emery's hospital room. He's got a brace on his arm to keep his IV needle safely in place. He's got a sock on the brace because he was rubbing his face on the velcro straps, scratching his skin pretty badly.

Update on Nov 9, 2009 by Drew & Leah

FOLLOW UP:

Emery slept really well last night, and woke up this morning (Monday) without a fever! The nurse said that that's exactly what they were looking for. So he has avoided having more tests, and we are set to be discharged from the hospital today!

Halloween!

Emery's first halloween this past week, and we could tell that he wanted to be a poet. But his beret didn't arrive in the mail until the afternoon of the 31st, so for the first half of the day he was a pumpkin!

The day before halloween, we went to NYC for a photo shoot.

Click here to see photos from NYC, Halloween and Emery's first trip to an apple orchard!

Wisconsin!

The four of us (including Simon, remember him?) trekked over to Wisconsin last week to introduce Emery to Leah's grandmother and aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, grocers, servers, baristas, gas station attendants and more. We had a really great time catching up with family, and we even saw a few snow flurries!

Emery enjoyed spending time with his Grandma and Grandpa Martz, and meeting Great Grandma for the first time. The drive was rainy both ways, but it was sunny for most of our time there. Even though it was cold.

Emery forgot to bring his winter hat, so we had to get him one at Target. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your tastes), the only hat they had was this pointy-eared thing with puff balls on the ears. Leah thought it was cute, but I had some reservations. What do you think?

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WISCONSIN PHOTOS!

Or if you have time, scroll down to see a couple of videos.

Two Short Videos

This is Emery just being Emery:

This is Emery with his Great Grandma Ackatz:

Guitaring

Emery's Grandpa and Mimi came to visit from Ruston, LA this weekend! Leah and I really enjoyed seeing them, and Emery seemed really happy to meet them in person after so many video chats. We thought it would be a slow relaxing weekend, but they came along for a couple of photo jobs and it ended up being pretty busy.

On Saturday, we had a shoot at the beach in Avalon, NJ. So emery got to hang out with Grandpa and Mimi at the beach while Leah and I photographed a family with four beautiful children.

First Attempts To Talk

Ohio Video

First Road Trip

my lovely sisLeah and I have been missing my sister and her hubby, Jason, and their children Raen, Nicholas and Paxten for a long time now. They only live six hours away, but it's been hard for us to get out there enough. So last weekend we packed up the car, strapped Emery into his carseat, and started down the PA turnpike.

Leah in the rental car, with our dead car next to her. Unfortunately, about two hours into our drive our car broke! Transmission. We limped it to a repair shop (thank you GPS!) that just happened to be owned by two guys who had retired from working at the Ford plant down the road. They did a free diagnosis for us and said we'd be looking at a couple thousand dollars for all the work that would be needed to get the car running safely again.

So we rented a car, left our car with them and headed to Ohio!

my lovely nearphew. the smartest, funniest, most fun-to-be-ound sixth grader in the worldWe had a great weekend with my sister and family. Jason and Genelle's children are so sweet and smart and happy. They were super excited to meet their cousin, Emery, and we all had a great time together. It's really nice that Emery will have three cousins who live so close (relatively speaking)! Hopefully they will have many fun weekends together over the years.

When we got back, our friends who live in NJ let us borrow their van (thank you Koerwers!) until we could get a car. Which we did pretty quickly. We had already researched which car we'd want, so we knew that we were looking for a 2009 Toyota Matrix with low miles.

it's called nautical blueHere's a photo of what our car looks like when it's driving and being photographed by a professional photographer. It looks good, but this photo makes it sparkle a bit more than what you'd see in real life. Anyway, it's an All Wheel Drive model, which is nice.

Also, Emery has learned to smile! It's pretty darn cute. Click the picture below to see more photos from our Ohio trip!

click to see more photos!

First Day At The Beach

Emery has already come on a couple of photo shoots with us. But only when our clients know we've recently had a baby and insist that we bring him along. Here are some pictures of Emery at our most recent photo shoot in Stone Harbor.

We don't have time to write or post more because we're on our way to see my awesome sister and her awesome family in Ohio!!

Click here to see all the photos from the beach.

Heads Up

Today was Emery's one month doctor's appointment (even though he's four days away from a month old). He weighs over eleven pounds now! And he's 23 and a quarter inches long. Which means he's eating well and growing well, which means he's one happy baby. Which means we're two happy parents so far.

And for a couple of weeks now, he's been doing a crazy thing that he's not supposed to do just yet. He's holding up his head with some bit of control at times. Lying on his belly, he's been able to lift his head and turn it since he was a week old. But at about two weeks, he started holding his head up when he was upright.

He can't do it for long, but he's getting pretty good at it. One day he'll probably be blogging about some major school or career accomplishment. But for now, he's keeping things simple. He's just holding up his head on his own. And we're pretty proud of him for that. Here's some video.

Weight Up

not a breast pumpAt first, we noticed he wasn't pooping enough. Then we noticed that after two weeks, he hadn't gotten back up to his birth weight yet. That's when we realized that Emery wasn't getting enough food. A lactation consultant at the Breat Feeding Resource center helped us out a lot. She said that eventually, Emery's mouth will be strong enough to get all that he needs, but for now we will have to supplement. So we follow up each breastfeeding session with either pumped milk, formula, or some combination of the two.

emery asleep in his recliner. After only two days of doing this, Emery was back up to his birth weight of 9 pounds 13 ounces. And only five days after that, he was up to 10 pounds 7 ounces! Go Emery! Our next doctor appointment is on Tuesday, so we'll see how much he weighs then.

Meanwhile, we are doing what we always do. Going on a few photo shoots, staring at the baby, and just hanging out. I'm posting a video so that you know just what it's like to stare at Emery. He makes the strangest faces sometimes! This video doesn't show the sheer variety of crazy faces in his repertoire, but he's doing some weird thing with sticking his tongue out.

Also, there's some bathing footage in here. Can't wait to pull this out when he's older. And just so you know, there's about one minute of staring and about two minutes of bathing. This doesn't go on forever:-)

Almost Two Weeks

In two days, Leah and I will have been parents for two weeks! I don't think we've made any major mistakes so far. Although we might have come close when we took Emery's stroller up an escalator for the first time. But I learned that the trick is to have both of the front wheels on the same step. And whatever you do, don't back up.

Leah has been feeling better after her heroic and epic labor. She's definitely not feeling 100% yet -- or even 80% yet -- but she's making progress and feeling a little bit better each day. She and I have enjoyed being parents together so far. We're figuring things out together and really having fun at times.

This past Friday, I shot my first wedding without Leah. Even though a really good friend and great photographer came along to help (thanks Lisa!), I still missed having Leah there. It's fun working together, and I didn't realize how much I'd miss her until I got there and felt kinda sad for a minute. But she was able to stay with Emery, and that was a good thing. I don't think this bride and groom would have wanted a nine-day-old baby following them around throughout the day.

It's hard to tell from these pictures, maybe, but Emery is changing as he gets older. He's almost half-a-month old now, and it makes sense that he wouldn't look like a three-day-old anymore. Which is how old he was in many of the other photos you see lying around this site.

This morning, I think that Leah, Emery and I are going to walk down to a local coffee shop to hang out for a bit. The owner and barista there are friends of ours, and they have been eagerly waiting to meet Emery. Whatever you're doing today, I hope you enjoy it thoroughly.

Video

Here's a little footage from the first couple days of Emery's life.

Here's a quick video of Emery waking up (with a little help).

Cutie Cousin

Emery got to visit with his awesome, cute cousin Lennon this week!

Day 4

First morning togetherWell, Emery is not quite four days old yet. But we're already getting to know a little bit about him and his developing personality. For example, he likes being outside. Yesterday he was fussy for a good half hour until I took him for a little walk. Once outside, his whole body relaxed and he looked up at me as if it was about time I took him out for some fresh air.

For those of you who have been on my case to post more pictures, I'm

He sleeps hard!

going to add more than you really want to our photo album, which you can

find here: http://drewhood.smugmug.com/Emery%20Joseph%20Hood

Bookmark it!

Emery Joseph Hood

Late at night on July 15, 2009, Leah and I finally got to meet the newest member of our family, Emery Joseph Hood! Leah was absolutely incredible. After nine months of creating a comfortable, healthy home for Emery, she made it through 48 hours of intense labor to usher him into the world safely. At birth, he weighed 9 pounds 13 ounces, and was 22.5 inches long.

As many of you know, we were hoping to have the baby at the Birth Center, which offers a home-like environment with experienced nurses and midwives to help birth the baby. But when the labor stopped progressing, we went across the street to the Bryn Mawr Hospital for a little nudge. Emery was finally born at 11:02 pm.

Here is a video of Emery sitting in Grandma Martz's lap. A pretty fun activity for his first morning in the world.

This is a photo of Leah and Gazelle, our midwife.

Someday Soon (this baby will come)

Here are some video excerpts from the past couple of days. We left out the footage from Chinatown, Old City and the Art Museum. Maybe when we have time, we'll add that in:-)

Stick around after the song for the firework finale!

New York & Crib

We had a fun day yesterday. My step-sis, Anna (missed you, Lauren and Graham!), took a field trip to New York City with her choir. And Donna went along as a chaperone! So we got to hang out with them in Chinatown, the subway, and the Natural History Museum. It was great to see them, and really fun to be in NYC.

Leah and I were especially impressed with the train ride into Penn Station. Apparently, NJ Transit got some cool new double-decker trains. The seats were pretty comfy, although not designed for taller-than-average folks. But anyway, we thought they were really cool. A clean, smooth, quiet, fast ride.

Also, we put the crib together this week! Our friends, the Koerwer family, gave us a crib and dresser. They're really nice (the crib and the dresser and the Koerwers). Definitely something we would have picked out for ourselves if it had come to that. And as an added bonus, our kid will get to use the same crib as some of the coolest people we know.

So the room is starting to look more baby-ish. We got some baby-friendly paint, but haven't run that by the apartment manager yet. And we have a bunch of frames lying around, but nothing to put in them just yet, although leah's got some cool ideas.

Today, we're off to shoot a wedding! It's actually taking place at a really cool and very old public library in Philly. Should be fun.