growing baby

Mateo’s nighttime companions in bed seem to include a representative from each of his current or past passions. There’s a monkey lovie — one of four that we bought for him to ensure nighttime simian continuity in case of accidental loss. There’s a mini-tiger, representing his animal toys — Mateo dubbed him “Tiny”. There’s a mini-Elmo, who’s a stand-in for a large Elmo that’s too big to take to bed. There’s a Dory (from Finding Nemo); this is a hard-plastic fish that looks to be about life-size. There’s also a little train wagon, made out of wood and sporting four wheels. Finally, quite often he drags a book to bed (fortunately usually putting it on his bedstand before going to sleep).

At the rate he’s accumulating toys to take to bed, I shudder to think what it’ll be like in another year: hopefully we’ll still be able to locate our son there among the mountain of toys…

I have no idea what this means, but Mateo says this very often!  Tonight he was handing Ilya books to read and then immediately taking them back saying, “Noo, that’s a jing jong!”  He did that about 20 times in a row.  Interpretations anybody?

Roan and Mateo are such wonderful little brothers.  Mateo loves touching Roan’s hands and face, kissing Roan, and, if he’s supervised, holding Roan on his lap.  Mateo even wants to carry Roan, but he’s a bit too little himself for that.  While Roan’s so little it’s hard to say whether he likes anything in particular, it seems like he’s extra talkative when he’s with Mateo, cooing loudly when we read stories to both of them or when Mateo’s playing right by him.

In general, Roan’s a very happy baby–he’s been smiling a lot and making happy oohs and aaahs.  Roan’s very mellow unless he’s hungry–he even tolerates tummy time for a fairly long stretch.  He still sleeps a ton, especially on people or in his swing.  He’s also been sleeping okay during the night–he usually wakes up every 2 hours to eat, but he’s done a few 5 hour stints that have made his mama and papa very happy.  Roan’s also already been on lots of adventures with Mateo–he’s visited Mateo’s daycare, gone to the Annenberg Beach House and Huntington Gardens, and strolled along the promenade (all snug in either the Ergo carrier or his moby wrap).

Mateo’s speaking more every day, including inserting some “ums” and “I means” that are normal in adults but seem so terribly cute in him.  Mateo also said his first I love you….to his Nemo bathtoy.  Oh well, hopefully “I love you mama/papa” won’t be too far behind “I love you, Nemo.”  Mateo’s also starting to love made-up stories, especially at bedtime.  He keeps asking for more libros (books) and I have to remind him their called cuentos (stories) instead.  Mateo’s also taken up a new hobby recently–D.J.ing: he takes all his kids cds in and out of the cd player and changes songs, repeats, and so forth.  He’s particularly interested in the number of the song and requests songs in the car by track number.  Most excitingly, Mateo’s starting to read!  He knows easily 50+ words by memory and he’s also starting to sound words out.  You should see him have a go at Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop!

 

 

ROAN RUBEN HAYKINSON
an act in a play

(It’s the middle of the night. LINDA is sleeping soundly. Her husband, ILYA, had just finished doing some work and has come to bed. He is falling asleep.)

LINDA: Husband, awaken. I feel a tightness in my belly.

ILYA (groggily): Hrmph. Indigestion?

LINDA: No, contractions. (Melodically) It is time!

ILYA (groggily): Hrmph. We should sleep then, lest we be tired in the morrow.

LINDA: I yield to your advice.

(Fifteen minutes pass.)

LINDA: And another tightness! I feel that we may have a child born soon, one whose date of birth will sound rhythmic — four, twenty seven, eleven. I like this date.

ILYA: Hrmph. My advice remains; sleep beckons.

LINDA: I could not be in greater agreement.

(Fifteen minutes pass.)

LINDA: And another tightness.

(The scene changes. It is now the morning. Quietly, the family pantomimes the older child MATEO preparing to go to school, eating breakfast, and getting in the car with ILYA. They drive away.)

LINDA (to herself): Oh, what a joyous morning. I will pretend to sleep a bit, and eat something yummy and nutritious for break-fast.

(She pours herself some milk and eats a banana.)

LINDA: Oh, praises to the wondrous day that’s causing my muscles to tighten!

(The door opens, and ILYA walks in.)

ILYA: How be thee, my wife dearest? Has the tightness remained? Has it come on stronger, or with more rapidity?

LINDA: It is there, still!

ILYA: With you as my witness, I begin and shall continue recording these periods of tightness on my tele-phone.

LINDA: And as your witness, I affirm to you the beginning of another case of this belly-affliction.

ILYA: Let us also dispatch a message to your mother, so that she shall feel empowered to care for Mateo this eve, or even longer, should your waters break.

(Hours pass. It is the evening now. ILYA and LINDA are outside, walking.)

ILYA: You are so strong, Linda! You are able to walk right through your tightness.

LINDA: They do come on strong, but I think of the ocean, and of the baby riding out on a surf-board over the wave. We are there together.

ILYA: The imagery sounds truly lovely.

(They walk quietly for a while.)

ILYA: Are your tightnesses still there?

LINDA: They are, and they are stronger yet. It is no longer enough to think of the ocean. Perhaps we should call our Doula to help us in this journey!

ILYA: It is a plan well made. (He dispatches a message to the DOULA.)

ILYA: Ah, a message. (He plucks it out of the air and places it on his tele-phone.) The Doula tells us of her
imminent arrival. We should head on home.

(They walk home, stopping every now and anon.)

(Scene changes. LINDA is sitting in a chair. The DOULA is right in front of her, and ILYA is at the stove in the kitchen. He’s making brownies from a mix.)

LINDA: I need your hands, husband.

(ILYA walks over to LINDA, holds both of her hands.)

ILYA: I am here, o wife, so lean on me as you work really hard to bring this babe into our world.

DOULA: Tis a labor of love, but you need to care for yourself throughout. Breathe in, lower your shoulders, and let the wave come down smoothly over you.

LINDA (exhausted): Thank you as always. (Her shoulders relax.)

(ILYA walks over to the stove. The brownies need glazing.)

ILYA (to himself): I think I just need to spread this out. (Does it). Like this.

LINDA: I fear the hour is coming. We should leave this homestead and walk over to the hospital.

DOULA: For it is close, and your tightnesses are mere minutes apart, yes, it is prudent we do so.

(They grab some bags sitting nearby, and walk outside. Stopping every couple of minutes to let LINDA hold on to ILYA as she experiences painful tightnesses.)

LINDA: I afear a change in my condition. The babe may be born at any moment, the hour is nigh. However shall we cross the wide chasm of Wilshire Boulevard? The automobiles can come before we cross the distance of the green light.

ILYA: We should hurry across, but worry not. The automobiles can stop and wait.

DOULA: I shall be your support and together we will make it there. The hospital is but two hundred steps thence.

(They walk across the road. LINDA then stops.)

LINDA: The head is out! I can feel it!

ILYA: But surely you’re mistaken! It is too early for this, and it should take at least a half of an hour.

LINDA: Yet, it is so. Observe, my waters have broken.

DOULA: I would run to the hospital, but you, Ilya, are lighter of foot and may make it there faster.

ILYA: I shall not disappoint.

(He runs off to the hospital door. A security GUARD sits there.)

GUARD: Hark! Who goes there?

ILYA: It is I, a husband of a wife who’s giving birth on the corner of the street yonder. I am in dire need of a wheeled chair, and of people of the medical profession.

GUARD: The chair you seek is over there. (Points.) Run, and I shall inform the medical people.

ILYA: My gratitude for your assistance.

(He grabs the wheeled chair and runs back to the corner where LINDA is now standing, leaning on the DOULA.)

DOULA: The hour is nigh. Strike that, nay, the hour is here. Go and catch your offspring!

ILYA: Oh my. (Looks at LINDA’s pant leg. It is twice its normal girth.) Oh my.

(He looks inside the pant leg, to discover ROAN.)

ILYA (grabbing a hold of ROAN): He’s here. (To nobody in particular) Help!

ROAN: Waaaah!

DOULA: Pass him to me!

(ILYA passes ROAN between LINDA’s legs to the DOULA, who hands ROAN to LINDA.)

DOULA: Give me your overcoat. We shall cover the young babe with it. (Takes overcoat from ILYA, wraps it around ROAN.)

LINDA: I must sit down, now. Help me in this, dear friends.

(The DOULA and ILYA help LINDA into the wheeled chair. The GUARD arrives.)

GUARD: As the official representative of the hospital, I am empowered to make transportation of patients possible.

ILYA and DOULA: What?

GUARD: Let me push the chair to the hospital.

ILYA and DOULA: Oh. Very well.

(Scene changes. The GUARD pushes the wheeled chair into the hospital door, and over to the elevators, where he is met
by a chorus of NURSES.)

NURSES: Even though we were late
We’ve arrived to deliver
Or at least to receive
Little babe born so near.
We will help cut his cord
And will help with his mom
Then we’ll warm his pink skin
And shall celebrate some!

ILYA: Thank you, o nurses, for meeting us here.

LINDA: It’s too bad we missed the nice rhythm of four, twenty-seven, eleven. But the next day’s date is also nice!

NURSES: And we praise your resolve
And your catching the babe
In the street, by yourself
Tis a tale for the age!

ILYA: Without the Doula, though, I would be but a mess. And this is not even to mention my hardest-of-all laboring wife,
Linda, whose courage and strength got us here.

LINDA: Little Roan, he’s so nice and pink and piglet-like! He snorts a bit! But how unlike our plan was this delivery!

DOULA: Yes, indeed. We had planned to arrive at the hospital after some delay, so as to not stay here for a long time. But this is quite certainly beyond what I’ve expected. Never in my three hundred births has this happened.

LINDA: And we planned to have the baby’s cord be severed a little bit later, to let the final bit of placental blood circulate. But at no time was the plan to have this series of events take place.

ALL (rejoicing): Let us praise the young life
That began on the street
Quite a yarn, for the wife
To give birth on her feet
We shall sing this in song
We will tell the whole world
Of the Haykinson, Roan
Let this story be heard!

(Curtain falls.)

At around 12:33am today (April 28th), Linda gave birth to Roan. At 3295 grams and 50 cm in length, he is a happy little boy sleeping next to Linda.

More details later.

Mateo is totally energetic and happy and, as far as we can see, well!  He’s staying out of school for another week so we can get his last test results and consult with doctors a few more times.  Assuming the news is good, we anticipate him going back to school again next Monday.  In the meantime, Mateo clearly misses his little friends.  He talks about them at home, asks us to write their names, and Saturday, when we bumped into one of his little friends at IKEA, he kept saying “I want Banksy” (his friend’s name) long after we’d said goodbye.  But, with any luck, he’ll be playing with all his little buddies in no time at all!

Tuesday morning Mateo woke up completely lethargic, he kept starting to fall asleep during breakfast and couldn’t really walk without holding Ilya’s hand.  When Ilya tried to take Mateo’s temperature, our thermometer said his temperature was too low to read.  When we called Mateo’s pediatrician on the phone, he told us to head to the emergency room.  Once there, Mateo was immediately admitted, measured with a temperature of 92.6 degrees (6 degrees too low!), and underwent a battery of tests (an EKG, a spinal tap, x-rays, 5 vials of blood drawn for testing, a urinary catheter to get a urine sample, and more).  He was also put on IV and under layers of blankets (one of which was inflated with constantly heated air).  By the afternoon, we were able to get his temperature up to almost normal and had ruled out some possibilities (the worst of which was meningitis), but Mateo still needed to be admitted to the hospital, in the children’s ward.  Mateo was so lethargic that, though he cried during the medical procedures, he didn’t protest being restricted to his bed. Ilya and I of course spent the night with Mateo in the hospital, though none of the three of us slept very well between the beeping IV monitors and middle of the night monitoring.

Wednesday, Mateo woke up so much better.  He had energy and was playful.  We were delighted that he was feeling so much better, though, of course, it made keeping him in bed that much harder.  At one point, a lovely nurse volunteer came by with lots of toys and played with Mateo.  She gave Mateo a big teddy bear and they practiced giving the bear an EKG, checking its blood pressure and temperature, putting on bandaids and lots of other things.  Mateo really enjoyed that part–especially since she brought a mat and put it on the floor so he could play out of bed by his IV drip monitor.  Much later, they said Mateo was doing well enough that he could be mostly disconnected from the IV and only reconnected periodically to receive his antibiotics (the medicine was too powerful to give orally).  Once freed from the machine, we put on Mateo’s shoes and socks and he happily jumped up and down the hall of the hospital.  So, Mateo was clearly *feeling* better, but we still had no idea what caused his system to go into shock on Tuesday morning.  (Neither Mateo’s pediatrician nor Ilya’s grandmother–who had been a pediatrician for many years in Russia–had ever seen a child’s temperature go so low.)

We also stayed in the hospital Wednesday night and were finally released shortly after noon Thursday (today).  Mateo is home, happy and playful.  However, we still want to get to the bottom of this problem.  We’ll be seeing Mateo’s pediatrician tomorrow afternoon and he will be giving us referrals to see immunologist and allergist specialists as well.  Mateo is doing well now, but wish us luck in figuring out how to keep him the wonderfully healthy boy we always want to see.

In anticipation of our upcoming double-carseat life (and wanting to bring friends and family with us to various places too), we recently bought a 7-seater.  Ilya’s friends ribbed him a bit about his new mom-mobile.  Ilya’s response?  It’s his daddy-wagon.

I just witnessed how Mateo:

1. Walked up to the computer and climbed on the chair
2. Opened the window with videos of his favorite cartoon (Pocoyo)
3. Double-clicked the episode he wanted to watch
4. Minimized the window with the list of episodes
5. Resized the video player window to be double the normal small size

Let’s just say his computer skills are nearly complete now…

Ilya’s working in China right now and then heading to Japan.  In the meantime, Mateo remembers his papa and sends him love, Mateo-style:

1) We look at the globe everyday and see how Ilya flew from Los Angeles to Beijing.  We also look at how Abue (my mom) flew from LA to Belize.

2) When we went to Chinatown this past weekend, the first thing Mateo said when he got out of the car was “papa?!”  I had to explain Chinatown was different from China.

3) Three days ago, Mateo–who often protests Ilya putting him to sleep–said “papa silla manana” (tomorrow papa chair–his way of saying papa will put me to sleep after rocking with me in the chair).  Two days ago, Mateo said “hoy papa silla” (today papa chair).  Yesterday, Mateo didn’t mention papa silla–poor little one, maybe he’s given up.  He’ll be overjoyed when papa returns!!

4) We try to skype with Ilya every day.  Mateo mostly doesn’t pay attention, but he likes waving hello, goodbye and sticking out his tongue.

In not totally unrelated news, Mateo chose his own outfit this morning.  (We were running late, so I didn’t protest.)  His choice: his green pajama shirt, his bright purple daycare shirt (it looks blue in the picture, but it’s purple–it’s his new favorite shirt after they had spirit day and all the kids wore their shirts the same day), and his burgundy pants.  Voila!

Mateo topped off his outfit with a bright orange jacket–and since it’s raining, he’ll no doubt be wearing his blue batman rainboots later.  I did mention that Ilya’s in China, right?