The Swarrell Life

So I had an interesting thing happen the other day. A friend of ours calls me and says that she is stuck in a meeting and could I pick up her boys, since they go to the same day care provider. So I said sure, since it was not a big deal. I know the boys and they love Trinity. So I go and pick them up and drive them less than a mile home. We then keep ourselves entertained watching Trinity play around and then it is time to feed. So I told them about how a friend of theirs, who is six, fed Trinity while we were at their house and I asked if they wanted to feed her. Payton, the younger boy, says that he'd like to. So we prop up some pillows and away we go! Trinity is the easiest feeder, so it's not a big deal. Spencer took a turn feeding too! While they weren't feeding, they played with Trinity's toys...hmmm. I guess fun doesn't have an age limit! These boys sure enjoy being around Trinity! It's fun to think that she'll have them around to take care of her as ...

Bear with me because I am going to skip around a little bit on this. I read a few blogs and ran across some interesting stuff today. I don't have time to write much about it, but I'll try to distill my core reactions to the postings. Ready? Here goes... 1. Father Stephen had this to say about righteous anger: Strangely, I find our century (and the ones preceding it) not overburdened with love, but rather riddled with those who believe their hatreds to be justified. God save me from the man who believes Himself just. I do not stand a chance before him. Rather, number me with the harlots and the publicans - number me with the worst of sinners. Within that refuse of humanity I may find mercy and a heart kind enough to pray for a man as wicked as myself. Strangely I have been thinking about anger and "tough love" lately. If tough love makes you feel good and justified, then it wasn't love. The same with righteous anger. If it makes you feel better to vent it, then it...

No really, I can. I had a dream the other night, and I saw this in my future: Hat tip to Andrew over at the Daily Dish

We took Trinity to the doctor for her 2 month checkup and she weighed in at 10lbs 10oz and 22 inches long! She's a MONSTER! Okay, maybe not a monster, but she sure has grown like crazy. She also had her first immunizations, four of them in total. She had one given orally and then three given on shot form. It was a little hard to watch, but these things can help her stay healthy, so that makes it a little easier. It sure was hard on mommy though, those hormones kick in and there's no much you can do about it. So Trinity was a little bit fussy last night when we tried to feed her, but all in all she is such great baby that it's hard to fault her for much. As people keep telling me, she'll never be as perfect as she is right now. True that. But check out the phone pics below, she doesn't even look the same. This is the day after she was born... This is two days old... This is about three weeks old... Just under two months, how you like me now? This yesterday, at almost...

A friend of ours just had a baby! As some of you may or may not know, Sky was a student from OHSU who was here for a few weeks working with Eric and Autumn at the hospital. He and his wife just had a baby girl, Paige Isabella, weighing in at 7 pounds 11 ounces. On another good note, Trinity slept for almost 6 hours last night...woohoo! And because everyone likes pictures of babies, here's the new addition:

Or, maybe you didn't. Either way, here comes the video! I love video cameras! This makes things so much easier. The only problem is my meandering commentary that rarely makes sense. I should really keep quiet during a video shoot. Here's the video of my amazing little daughter.

That's what I'll be in if I add the wrong pictures to the blog...but I'm going to risk it because I know that YOU want pictures of Trinity. She's 9 weeks old now...WOW! It's so incredible to have a baby. I know that everyone says that it changes everything, but there's just no knowing how much it changes and in what ways. I don't even know how I am changing, but I know that I am so happy to be a dad. This is fun stuff, even the late nights! That's all the words I have tonight, so without further ado: Does this diaper make my butt look big? My ladies...'nuff said This one will haunt her well into her teens...

No, no opinion here, just a word cloud from his inauguration speech on Tuesday. Thanks to Tony Jones . I am always interested in words and how people use them. I wonder if word frequency was a part of the planning process for Obama's speech writers.

I am sitting here waiting for my daughter to fall asleep, so that when I go to bed and leave the bedroom door open, she won't wake my wife. Autumn needs sleep. I grouse a lot, mostly to myself about how tired I am. But statistics show that Autumn is consistently getting less sleep than me. Maybe I shouldn't take my sleep so seriously. I just wish I functioned at a higher level on 5 hours of sleep. Of course, the great thing about being tired is that when you write late at night (like this blog post) you tend to think that you are more clever and more profound than you really are. I suppose that's okay, it's good for self esteem. I read a post by a young man today, it was about changing your mind. He asks "Have You Changed Your Mind Recently?" I haven't changed my mind recently. He is speaking in a political context, (and with the inauguration only hours old, who can blame him?) but I think that this line of thinking extends into all facets of life. For me...

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13 As we approach the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States, and the first African-American (read: black) president, I am reminded of the divisiveness of this campaign season and my participation in it. I certainly was divided, heavily. I am in a minority among those of my faith who voted the way I did. How could I vote for someone who supports abortion? How could I support someone who wants to take away our guns? How could I support someone who wants to be sworn in on the Koran? You see, it's easy to get caught up in the rhetoric of partisanship and the hype and the rumors that fly around behind the scenes. "Republicans don't care about the environment". Can you see how easy it is? "Democrats are lazy and don't want to work". Easy as pie. But I think that there is one thing that we can all do togethe...

I had my birthday celebration over the weekend and my wife pointed out that when my daughter is 35 years old, I'll be 70 years old. I wonder if social security will still be a viable source of income at that point in time. I wonder what kind of world my daughter will live in. What kind of world will she bring her children into? I used to think that it was irresponsible to bring children into this world because it was slipping into moral decay. I didn't have any hope in people and the world which we have created. I think that falling in love with Autumn gave me a different view on hope. That is to say, I found it after I met her, or at least after we started dating. I think that when I stopped taking myself so seriously, I had more hope. There was so little that I could control, and it had always been that way. It always will. One lesson that I can still stand to learn on a daily basis is that it's never as bad as I think it is. In fact, it's pretty good. I am so lucky a...

Maybe it's the lack of sleep, maybe it's parenthood, I'm really not sure. But this brought a tear to my eye this morning. Everyone needs a good friend. Hat tip to Karin Rene for the link!

This is for you Jackie...

But all she ever does is lay around! I mean, seriously, really? I need some productivity, not sleeping! This kid can sleep anywhere, on anyone! We should all be so lucky to able to sleep anywhere, anytime! Check this out, she even slept through the new year!

My daughter has been swallowed by a fluffy pink bunny! she was last seen looking really cute:

I know I don't write enough on this blog. But here's a couple of thoughts for you. One is that parenting changes your life. Ha! I'll be you never heard that before. But the less obvious piece is that it changes it in subtle ways that you don't notice at first. If brings focus in new ways, mainly because it becomes very obvious where you need to focus. On that note, I have found it disturbing how easy it is to just sit and stare at my daughter for extended periods of time. I'm not talking days here or anything, but she doesn't do much and I still like to stare at her. Here, try this video and you'll see what I mean: Pretty easy to just sit and stare huh? I told you so. Over Christmas we went to McCall, Idaho. While we were there, we did a little snowshoeing and even went down a zip line. I admire my wife because she doesn't swear very much. Case in point is this video of her trip down the zip line. There's a lot of exclamations, but no swearing. Admir...

...with this statement . I have been trying to stay away from politics since the election, but occasionally I read some articles and comments. This one I found linked at the Daily Dish and I like it: JEFFREY GOLDBERG: "If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing. These aren’t my words — they’re Barack Obama’s. But I attach myself to this sentiment." Who wouldn't agree with this? Would Jesus? Here is why I agree:

New photos on the right, Christmas and New Years. I have some videos that you'll like too, but I don't have them online yet. Be patient, it's coming.

This is news? I guess I did just promote it. Oh well. Didn't we already know this ?

Wow, 2009 is already here. It seems like just yesterday that Autumn and I found out the she was pregnant. But here we are with a little baby daughter who is almost six weeks old. That's just crazy. I still find it a little be odd that she's here to stay. The only thing that comes close in experience is getting married. Now I have two beautiful girls in my life that are here to stay. Life is good! I'll finish my MBA this summer, God willing. The possibilities are endless... We have more pictures, this time from the holidays. Trinity had her first Christmas and New Year. She celebrated both by sleeping heavily. She's her father's daughter, at least for now. I hear sleep patterns change. I have put a couple of albums up on the right, one is Christmas and one is the New Year celebration. Cheers!