Mika Mookers

My Mika Mookers is 11 months old - where has the time gone?!  Mika is such a good baby - very content as long as an adult presence is in the room.   She loves being around Taija and Luke!  Mika has started taking steps, but not quite ready to walk.  She still sleeps 9-10 hours a night with a few naps during the day.  She has 6 teeth now and still teething - although we have noticed she as quite the under-bite.  I guess we know that our future earnings will be paying for expensive dental work!

 Loves to help mommy with the endless piles of laundry!

 Just chillin in the car

Valentines Day

After noticing that so many people have such awesome Valentines Day traditions I stole some of them to make them my own!  On Valentines Day we celebrate by spending the evening as a family...with an AWESOME dinner!  This year with Tina's help we had steak shish-kabobs that were so yummy, corn on the cob (my kids seriously LOVE their corn), red jello, and bread.  And the best part was the dessert!  I made Molton Lava Cakes - they didn't turn out exactly how I had wanted, but were still delicious.  Holidays are so much FUN with little ones around and I look forward to many more holidays as a Mom!

Everglade Explorers

One of Pa's favorite things to do when he comes to Florida is go on adventures.  On one outing he and Taija found some pretty cool places out on the Everglades!  Complete with a boat ride through the swamp and spotting of alligators.  While he was here they decided to take Justin and Luke out on their adventure.

If that wasn't enough adventure they also went on an airboat tour of the swampy Everglades!

 Complete with AMAZING earmuffs!

Martin County Fair

While Pa and Grammy were here Taija wanted to take Pa on a ferris wheel for his birthday.  Although she kept asking to go to New York and the ferris wheel there, we figured for time and budget reasons we would stick closer to home.  I researched a bit and found the Martin County Fair would be here the same time as Pa!  It was a HIT!  The kids (and Pa) LOVED all of the rides!  Luke and Taija were the perfect ages and heights to ride all of the kiddie rides by themselves.  Luke was literally at the required height! YAY!

Pa even let me play one of the all-time best fair games...Balloon Darts!  It was great!  We won an interesting Bob Marley Winnie the Pooh!  And of course we indulged in the food.  Hot dogs, french fries, pizza AND a funnel cake!  Such FUN memories!

Silliness with Pa

Pa and Grammy came to visit us for Pa's birthday!  His birthday isn't until the end of the month, but he decide to spend this past week with us!  The kids LOVED celebrating Pa's birthday ALL WEEK LONG!  First we played at the mall...Luke and Taija even tried the trampoline bungee thing!  To our surprise they both LOVED it!

Next stop was to pick up crafts from the craft store!

Taija LOVES doing crafts and while Luke's attention span isn't that long it works perfectly with Pa's!

Scooters

Justin and the kids LOVE to take the scooters to the park and ride ALL over.  South Florida is pretty awesome in that there are parks literally EVERYWHERE!  This park is a few blocks north of our house and has a cool little bridge and trail area.

Kawasaki Disease

Last week Justin abandoned us to gallivant across the country for 5 days (ok so he was interviewing for residency positions in Pheonix and Salt Lake) while I was stuck at home with all 3 kids, one of which who was sick.  Mika began a fever of 103 on Tuesday and with Tylenol it would drop to 101.  I didn't think too much of it since she was still eating and sleeping like a champ.  Finally on Friday her fever peaked at 105 and her eyes began to be pink with no mucus or drainage so I took her in to a pediatrician (I couldn't get an appt with our regular pediatrician so I went to one around the corner).  They took her blood and a urine sample, but nothing came up.  Justin came home late Saturday night (after partying the night before with George Strait) and was very concerned the following morning when he changed Mika's diaper and found a rash on the upper part of both her legs.  I knew it wasn't diaper rash, but figured since the pediatrician dismissed it it wasn't important.  I took Luke and Taija to church leaving Justin to spend quality time with Mika, but that was short-lived.  I received a note from the daughter of our 1st counselor that read 'call Justin ASAP'.  NICE!  Needless to say we found ourselves on the way to Broward General ER!

Mika was diagnosed with Kawasaki Disease.  It is an interesting viral infection that leads to inflammation of the blood cells that can cause heart defects in children ages 1-5.  It is only diagnosed through it's symptoms which are:
fever for more than 5 days
red eyes
red tongue
dry red lips
peeling skin
swollen lymph nodes
red palms/soles

If caught within 10 days and treated with IVIG and high dose aspirin 90% of cases have no lingering side effects!  So we spent a few days in the hospital!  Mika was a trooper during it all!  She is ALL better and mostly recovered (she is now waking up a few times each night...gone are my nights of 12-13 hrs of sleep)!  We still follow-up with a cardiologist and the Infectious Disease doctor, but other than the initial scare we should be clear!

The RUN Road

Everyday Luke asks to go for a scooter ride...and since it gets us all out of the house and runs some of their energy out we usually go a couple of times each day.  Taija makes sure to clarify we are going to go out to the 'run road' which is just the parking lot around back of our complex.  There are never more than a few cars parked there and very little to no traffic.  We LOVE it!

 Mika hangs out in her wagon