NO MICROBURSTS, PLENTY OF OUTBURSTS

All of our hard work is paying off...Gage is finally staying in his bed ALL NIGHT and he hasn't been wetting the bed either. It's so nice to not have to do that laundry! He is very proud of himself too, so hopefully that will help it continue. Today, he put his Spiderman bag on his shoulder and said, "Bye, Mama! I'm going on a mission!" I asked him where he was going on his mission and he said "India!" I asked him what he was going to do in India and he answered "I'm going to India to help people build houses." So cute! He also said today that he wants another baby, but it HAS to be a boy so he can have a brother and he wants to name him Gage.

Bella's outbursts continue but I am confident that I finally know why. A lot of people have asked me how she's dealing with the new baby and I have always said that she's doing great, loves Paisley and is so sweet and gentle with her, that she doesn't seem phased at all. But I believe I was wrong. She is very sweet and gentle with her, but I think she is having a hard time. She is SO extremely attached to me. Even when I'm in the same room with her at home, she has to be touching me, or holding onto my leg. When I feed Paisley, she comes and sits right next to me and kisses Paisley's head. When Gage sits next to me or hugs me she gets really upset, hits him, and pushes him away from me and then climbs on my lap and cuddles. She cries excessively at any little hurt or fall that she used to smile and clap her hands about just to get attention. She does this a little bit to Rob, but mostly to me. I am going to make a special effort to spend more one-on-one time with her to help her through this "middle-child" syndrome. On the bright side, she is making leaps and bounds with her talking. She still LOVES books and she will identify lots of different things and animals. Her latest big achievement is "octopus". She will point to it and say, "Boc-ba-pus". I look forward to her being able to communicate her frustrations better. Gage was saying full sentences at this age which made it a lot easier to deal with his tantrums! Bella loves Daddy so much and he gets her to say and do the funniest things. In this picture he's teaching her to say, "West Side..." Those of you who know Rob will understand.

Paisley is still such a happy, content baby. She is consistently sleeping from 7pm until 6:30am and taking 3 to 3 1/2 hour naps. Sadly, though, we think she is losing her blue eyes. They now look more grayish and could still turn brown. Not that there's anything wrong with that!! Look at the chubbiness in the bath picture....love it!

We had a nice visit from Uncle Mike and Grandpa Powers on Saturday. Aunt Lora had to work, unfortunately. They brought us In 'n Out Burger and stayed a while. Bella wanted Grandpa to pick her up, but she is way too big for his back. I love it though because it gives him such a charge. He held Paisley for a while and said that Grandma would have eaten her up. I took a few pictures of them so that she will be able to see how much he loves her when she gets older. Uncle Mike reminded him of all the reasons he should stick around. Aaron was here too, and Rob asked his Dad how old he thought Aaron was. He guessed 26!! That was a nice compliment to Aaron and Grandpa couldn't believe it when we told him he was 40. I said, "Doesn't he look good?" And he gave one of his little phrases he uses: "I hope to tell ya.." He then asked Aaron how old HE looked and Aaron graciously replied "65." Grandpa got a pretty big kick out of that!

Courtney came up Saturday too because she won tickets to the Diamondbacks game that night and invited me to go along. Rob was so great to take on all three kids and let me go have a nice, relaxing dinner and then to the game. We had AWESOME seats...right behind the Diamondbacks dugout so we were eye level with the field and very close. I wish I had brought my camera. We had to pay extra attention when the left-handed batters got up (and there were tons) to watch for foul balls. There was one line-drive foul that we had to lean and duck to avoid. It bounced around our area and then a little boy picked it up. He was so excited. I thought about how much Gage would enjoy the game and decided I would look into getting tickets for us to go. It was nice to hang out with Courtney and we had a great time.

We have been enjoying the blogs from Mom and Dad. They finally made it to Hyderabad, India, and their stories are exciting and crazy! We look forward to hearing more from them and can't wait to see them on Skype. If anyone's interested, their blog address is: http://www.ladukeoldies.blogspot.com/.

We keep seeing on the news all of the damage the monsoon storms are causing throughout the valley, but we've hardly seen a drop. We get the big, gray stormclouds and the high humidity, but NO RAIN here in Gilbert. We are hoping to get some this week, minus the damage.