Okay everyone, I know you probably thought I’ve dropped off the face of the earth but surprise, surprise I am still here just more busy than ever. I truly was a little shocked to see it has been 2 months since last I’ve posted anything. Time really does fly. I have so many fun pictures to put up and I will get to that soon. Right now I am sitting in my class taking a moment to write. The weather is blustery and rainy. My students are suppose to be outside at PE but instead they are sitting on the floor of my class room finishing up PE in class with coach. I am ignoring them as any good teacher would when they only have a few moments to themselves(which technically it’s not really to myself anymore). I finally decided to face my web page and stop putting it off.  I feel like I have so much to update people on and I am not really sure where to start nor do I have enough time to do it now. I have exactly 7 minutes and counting until I become Mrs. Foster again. Probably the most important thing us Fosters have been up to in the last week or two is moving house. We havn’t moved far, just into the house that is attached to the house we used to live in. It is a very nice 2 bedroom house that is currently being made into a 3 bedroom for us. Everything about it is great and we are very happy to be in a smaller house….much more manageable. The construction is almost done and then we can truly settle in. I think this last month has been George and I’s busiest month of our lives. Anyways all is well with us. The girls are fabulous and growing and changing faster than I can keep up with. I promise to put pictures up just as soon as I can. It’s high on my priority list. Miss you all!

Better late than never! Enjoy…

Well, once again I am not really sure where to start because I’ve left it for so long. I’ll see what I can get done with Charlotte here. It’s about 6:30 in the morning on Friday the 7th. She is laying on the bed in the office, sucking her thumb, babbling away and throwing a fuss in there every once in a while. Isla and George are still asleep so this is my best chance of the day for computer work. We had a fabulous month of December. Viv(George’s mum) came for a visit from England. She arrived on the 11th or 12 and stayed till the 26th. We always thoroughly enjoy Viv’s company. Not only is she wonderful to be around but so much help. I always feel like my work load as a mother is cut in half. Viv cooks, cleans, does laundry, watches the kids, makes cups of tea, etc. It was her first time meeting Charlotte and she hadn’t seen Isla since last Christmas time. Isla had a blast with Viv here. She was anticipating here arrival for some time(last year she was just a bit too young to understand). It was so cute to see Isla introduce her “granny Viv” to every stranger she met. You could tell she was especially proud to show her off…..”Hi this is my granny Viv. She’s from England.” I always feel as though we don’t do that much fun tourist stuff while Viv is here but we do get a lot of quality time together and I know that’s what matters. We did venture to the beach since the weather was a bit opressive and hot(minus one huge rain and thunder storm), we had a couple rousing games of Bananagrams(kind of like Scrabble), we ate lots of yummy food and chocolate and drank a bunch of wine(I mean it was the holidays after all),  strolled Lahaina, shopping trips galore, printed out 3 years worth of photos from Viv’s camera at Costco, watched a riveting episode of Miss Marple…..took us days to get through it was so intense…..Not! By the way I have a bunch of photos to put up next of Viv’s trip. I thought I would start with the Christmas ones first. On Christmas Eve we had a quiet night in. We watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”  Isla left cookies and chocolate milk out for Santa before bed and made sure her stocking was hung up in her bedroom. Christmas morning she was of course up bright and early ready to tear into her presents. It was fun. Us adults were secretly just as eager to see what “Santa” had left us as well. we enjoyed a leisurely cup of tea and opened presents. My mom and I made Isla a princess dress(well more like my mom sewed and I supervised and gave encouragement). Esther and I then embellished it and made it look even more princessy. I must say it turned out beautiful and Isla loved it. Isla even said to me “Mom, this really is a REAL princess dress!” After tea and presents we then all headed over to Esthers for our usual Christmas morning feast. Esther hosts the breakfast every year but this was a particularly nice one this year because it was in her new house(she recently moved from Kula to Haiku). We gorged ourselves and opened yet more presents. I got wonderful things this year from everyone. We did miss my brother, he was on a trip to Tonga with some friends. In the evening everyone converged back at our place for a delicious roast dinner and a rousing game of Pictionary. Over all it was another fun filled Christmas day. Viv left us the next day and we were all VERY sad to see her go. The house always feel so empty after Viv leaves. She is definitely a presence that is hard to fill. , the next day, wandered around the house after waking and finally sat down with a big sigh and said “This day just isn’t fun anymore!” I know what she meant….it’s not the same without granny. We miss you Viv, thanks for everything! New Years in our household was a mellow occasion. The girls were in bed early. George and I had a glass of wine and caught up on some episodes of Dexter and I think we were in be by 10…..oh well, gone are the party nights. Truthfully I don’t miss them much. I’m much more content snuggling with George and knowing the girls are snug in bed. Is that a bad thing?

As I think most people know Isla has had a bit of kidney trouble since she was young. She had a bad bladder infection when she was 7 months old that went undetected for a month or so. She ended up spending a couple days in the hospital. It was a pretty traumatic experience for us all. (It took 3 hours to get her IV and about 50 different pokes) Anyways we found out that she has one slightly enlarged kidney, whether it was caused by the infection or the cause of the infection itself, we will never really know. Isla has had no reoccurring infections since her first one but because of how severe it was we have had to get checkups every so often. When she was almost a year old they flew us over to Oahu to preform a kidney scan where they inject dye into her via and IV and then put her to sleep and basically watch how her kidneys function. We found out then that one of her kidneys was slightly enlarged but although slower than the other one, it still functioned fine. That was good news but yet again another trying experience for us all( took an hour and half to get the IV in this time). So needless to say when the doctors suggested a follow up scan about a year ago I put it off. I was newly pregnant with Charlotte and feeling horrible, there never seemed to be a good time to fly over to Oahu(why they can’t do it on Maui I’ll never know), and Isla always seemed perfectly healthy and frankly we were hesitant to put her through it again especially since this time she would understand what was going on. So I put the test off for a year. But it was always one of those things in the back of my mind that I worried about…..”maybe she seems fine but something is going on and we will never know”. So long story short I finally scheduled the test for last week Friday. We decided to leave Charlotte with my Mom for the day and George, Isla and me fly over to Oahu. We of course prepped Isla before hand about getting a shot and having to take a little nap while the doctors took pictures of her tummy. We did focus more on the excitement of flying on an airplane and spending a special day with daddy and mommy. It worked well because Isla had no anxiety about it, I seemed to have enough for everybody. Not only was I wishing I could just have the test done for Isla, I was stressing about leaving Charlotte for the first time all day and being on another Island. We left on a 9 am flight. Isla loved flying and ooh and ahhed about seeing everything out the window(it was a very short flight about 19 minutes to be exact). Once there we caught a Kaiser Shuttle to the hospital and basically sat for 2 hours before we could check in. Isla was an angel and colored, said hi to everyone, shopped at the gift shop and ate a bunch of snacks. We checked in around 12 and they sent us up to the children’s ward to get the IV put in. Thankfully when we got there another little girl was getting one to. They let them play in the little play room for a while and put special numbing cream on the top of Isla’s hands to make it less painful. When it was time to get the Iv put in I decided to go with Isla…George was having his first experience with Nintendo Wii and I didn’t have the heart to drag him away, plus I held Isla down for all her other IV’s so I was prepared. Well it went great. She started to panic as we got in the room and the needle came out. But the nurses were awesome and tried to distract her as best they could. I had to hold her hand in a vice grip and try to hug her at the same time and she put up a pretty good fight along with a bunch of tears. They got the IV in the first try and the longest part was taping it all on so it wouldn’t be pulled out. Isla did great and was so brave and although she cried and kept telling me “I need a hug mom….I need a hug”(I was hugging her as tight as I could already). After it was done they let her pick out a toy from the treasure chest and most of the trauma was forgotten. We were then sent down to the radiology department and found out that she wouldn’t have to be put to sleep because she was old enough to lay still. Once they situated her on the table and got her a warm blanket, they rolled in a TV and put a cartoon on for Isla to watch. It was just what the doctor ordered…..it worked like a charm. She layed perfectly still for 45 minutes and held onto my hand the whole time. We could see on the screen that it looked very similar to last time. One kidney was still larger. They both filled up at the same time but the larger one was definitely slower to drain. We should be getting the results any day now. After the scan was done we of course told Isla she was the bravest girl we know. We then took the 3pm shuttle back to the airport and headed home on the 4:30 flight home. Over all the experience was not bad but exhausting mentally and physically. It felt amazing to get back to Charlotte and see that she had a wonderful day with grandma and was a dream child while we were gone. I couldn’t stop kissing her, I missed her even being gone just for a day. So all is done for hopefully another year or so. It went better than expected and hopefully the results will be the same as last time or better!

I always amazed with how time flies between blog updates. It about 11:30 on Wednesday morning. Isla is off at school and Charlotte is laying on the bed kicking her left leg(it’s like a little wind up leg). She is starting to fuss a bit so we’ll see how long I actually have although Charlotte has just discovered her thumb 2 days ago and LOVES sucking it! Let see where to start. First off I wanted to say thank you to all the wonderful people who leave comments for me. I enjoy reading them so much. Thank you Granny Viv and Robert, Mick, Saralyn, Melissa and more. It nice to know that people read the web page! It has been a busy few weeks as usual. We had a very nice Thanksgiving day up at my parents house(pictures to come). George cooked an amazing ham glazed with apple juice that had been reduced down to a nice syrup and I made a fresh apple crumble. My mom cooked the staples: turkey, mashed potatoes, yams and stuffing. My sister brought a couple of vegetable side dishes. My brother brought his big appetite. We ended up having so much food that we could have fed and army. It was all delicious and we were able to all have left overs for the next few days. I can’t believe we are already into December. My time off has been wonderful and I am getting a bit sad to see it end but on the other hand I am looking forward to going back to work(part time) and being back in the classroom. Bill Betham(owner of the house we live in) has been here visiting for the last week. We always look forward to seeing him and catching up. He is a chef like George so whenever he is around I get double the scrumptious food to eat like crab rolls, gnocchi, steak and so much more. Besides eating and socializing I have taken down the fall decorations and put up the Christmas stuff. We have yet to get a tree, maybe this weekend. Isla is very excikid(that is how she says excited) about the holidays this year. I think now she is old enough to understand and anticipate whats to come. I havn’t yet embarked on the x-mas present thing. We are on a bit of a budget this year since I am not working. I am attempting more handmade presents this year. So far I have a princess dress that my mom is helping to sew for Isla and a stuffed animal I am making for Charlotte. I have ideas in work for the rest of the family. Everything wont be made by hand but at least half of it will and I sure am having fun in the process. Us Fosters are anticipating the arrival of Granny Viv on the 11th of this month. She will be here till the 26th. I can’t tell you how excited we all are, George to see his mom, me to see Viv whom is like having a really fun girlfriend stay over, Isla to see her very nice granny Viv from England and Charlotte to actually meet her granny for the first time. It is beginning to feel not quite like Christmas with out Viv around. See you soon! All is well on the home front here. Charlotte is changing daily and just gets more and more fun to be around. I have been trying to get Charlotte interested in a pacifier since birth but she basically has wanted nothing to do with it. Unfortunately she wants desperately to suck something to soothe herself. So sometimes I was nursing her just because she would get inconsolable but then she would fill up too much and then throw it all up. All along she has diligently been trying to suck her fist to no avail. So 2 weeks ago my mom bought a bunch of different shapes of pacifiers in hopes something would work. We tried each with her and the first 2 she just wouldn’t take and the third one(the most ugly one of the batch) she loved from the very first suck! It been great having it and has definitely helped with sleep time and just being comforted in general. All though she likes her new binky she has not stopped trying to suck her finger and just 2 days ago she figured out how to get her thumb in her mouth. Once she figured that out she has been sucking away and getting very good at getting it in and out when she needs it. It is pretty cute to see as she is drifting off to sleep sucking away on her thumb! Other than that she is pretty much the smiliest baby but with a temper on her when provoked with things like taking the boob away before she is done or laying her down when she want to be held. And boy will she let us all know that she is unhappy! Isla is really being a great sister. You can tell she loves Charlotte and tells me often “Mom I just loving having a sister”. It’s very sweet to watch and I know will be even more fun for Isla when Charlotte can play and interact with her. Isla is growing like a weed these days. She always seems hungry for a snack and is getting so big. I got her out of the car the other night, she had fallen asleep on the way home, and she was hard for me to carry in. She just felt like such a big girl…..time is going so fast. She has George and me laughing daily along with pulling our hair out. I have realized that although I work with kids and have to be patient, George is definitely the one with the most patience. He is great with Isla. I tend to get riled up easier by her and loose my patience. She is such a sweetheart and so funny and clever but along with getting older comes the attitude and defiance and the general acting out about everything she is asked to do. Ahhhhhh…..but we do love her so! Anyways I have ramble on for quite sometime and Charlotte is letting me know that she is very unhappy being left in her crib so I will finish up now. 

Charlotte had her 2 month checkup last week. She is 22 inches long(she has grown 3 inches in 2 months) and her weight is 11 lb 3 oz (put on 5 lb in 2 months..not to bad). It is great to see her fill out and chub up….the chubbier the better! Her doctor asked me if I noticed that Charlotte favored turning her head to the right. I said it was a bit hard to say if she did or not. The reason she asked is because she noticed a slight bulge on Charlotte’s right forehead and very small flat spot on the back of her head(now I know it sounds a bit horrid but truly it is so slight that we didn’t even notice but the doctor is trained to see it). Sure enough when you look down on Charlotte’s head you could see what she was talking about. What she has is something called positional plagiocephaly(a big name for basically a flat head). It is due to something called torticollis(a tight muscle in her right side of her neck probably due to how she was positioned inside inside me). The tight muscle makes her favor turning her head to the right…it’s most comfortable that ways for her. Anyways I was a bit worried at the appointment when the discussion of helmets came up as a way to mold a child’s head back in shape. She said not to worry they come in a clear plastic color and you only need to fly to Oahu to get them fitted. Oh gee, why was I worried, clear plastic…..great not one will even notice(not). She also said Charlotte’s case was very very mild and a helmet will most likely not be necessary. She referred us to a physical therapist who could teach us some neck exercises to stretch the tight muscle. Fast forward to this week….I took Charlotte to meet the physical therapist. She was really great and very reassuring about fixing the problem. She talked about ways to position Charlotte while she sleeps or is in her carseat. She showed me some neck stretches and reassured me that babies head are so mailable that in no time, with a bit of work, we will have Charlotte loving to look towards the left as comfortably as the right and a beautiful round head!(truly her head does look round. You are probably all imagining the worst right now) I only really needed to take Charlotte this once to learn the stuff and then at her 4 month checkup everything should be good to go. Charlotte was pretty adorable with Nancy(the therapist). She just smiled away at her. Everytime Nancy did something with her that normally bothers other babies, Charlotte just smiled away and attempted to laugh(can’t really call it a laugh yet). When it was time to go Nancy said she wished Charlotte had more of and issue because she had so much fun with her and wished she need to see her more! Anyways I feel relieved that I have stuff to work on with Charlotte and that it won’t be and issue. Even if she ended up in a helmet, she’d still be the cutest Charlotte I’ve ever known!

Another fantastic Halloween under our belt. We had a BBQ at our house. Ruthie and the kids came down in the morning and we decorated the yard…..lots of spider webs and pumpkins and creepy crawlies. It looked great and the kids loved it, especially Isla! Everyone came over around 5pm and we dinned on delicious, homemade burgers thanks to George. They were topped with carmalized onions, cheese, garlic aioli sauce and marinated beets…..yummy! As dark decended upon us we quickly cleared food away and set off with the kids in tow down the street. George the Banana and Isla the Batarina charged every house with gusto and we came back with quite an assortment of goodies. I must say the banana costume was a popular one of the night….especially with all the kids. Only George could pull it off with perfection.