Mini Martz

A day after my wife and I returned from Paris last March we found out we were expecting our first child. It wasn’t entirely unexpected so we were pretty thrilled. Nine months later, our daughter arrived. Her due date was November 18 but she decided to show up to the party a day early.

We spent months getting as prepared as rookie parents can prepare with doing the nursery, organizing little tiny person clothes, and saving up for when Amy is off on maternity leave.

The stay at the hospital was a short one; we arrived at about 5:45, she was born at 6:46, and we were home by 10:30. The first couple nights were pretty stressful as we wanted to make sure we were doing everything right to make sure Lucy was okay. We did shift work for a bit so at least one of us was awake with her at all times. We spent one of her first mornings at 2:00am watching Elf.

We’ve since mellowed out a bit, partly from the need to sleep and partly from our midwives assuring us that babies can sleep without us watching them constantly.

Nikki, Janis, and Lindsay—our midwives from Blue Heron in Waterloo—were incredible. From the pre-natal classes to the check ups to the delivery; they were all such a huge part of her entrance into the world.

Ten days in and things are going great, even if she has started a hilarious new game of “when daddy starts to put a clean diaper on me I’ll pee on him”.


The Accelerator Centre Client Showcase

Back in September, the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo had their client showcase. This is an annual event that celebrates new graduates from their mentoring program. The AC has a stellar history of fostering startups from the very beginning and onto full-fledged tech companies. Some of their graduates include Kik, TribeHR, Plasticity, Client Outlook, and ClevrU.

For the event I designed the program as well as some posters that tell a brief story about a few of the graduates, including Axonify, Clearpath Robotics, Miovision, Intellijoint Surgical, FleetCarma, and Magnet Forensics. The posters were revealed during the event and then put on permanent display throughout the building. In doing the actual design of these pieces, I was able to use some of the photographs I took in August as graphic elements in them (as well as some digital ads later on).


5AM

My talented friend Brian has an exhibit at Kitchener City Hall this month. I was sad to miss the reception a couple weeks ago, but I stopped in this weekend to check it out and I’m glad I did. Brian normally doesn’t do portraits, but he’s stepped out of his comfort zone for this project and the results are very well done.

The theme behind his 5AM project is, quite simply, those behind the scenes at 5:00 am. While you’re most likely sleeping, these people are already doing their thing, be it milking cows, working dispatch in a call centre, or baking bread. He pairs a black and white portrait with a colour shot of that person’s workspace.

It’s a really unique project and I’m happy to know he’s continually adding to it. It’ll be fun to see the new pieces added over time. The exhibition is on display at the Rotunda Gallery until the end of October. Go see it!

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