Is The Baby In Your Belly?

I’ll get to the ear piercing eventually.  At least to me it was one of those important moments to document.  For you all it may be a boring topic so you can ignore that later post.

Anyway, to why I’m writing today - I’ve been writing a little about our surrogacy journey.  If this is new to you it’s because I haven’t posted these posts on Facebook so the only way you would know is that you are a “follower” of this blog or you come and visit me on your own without a Facebook reminder.

I’m not trying to keep it secret by any means.  I mean I put it on a public blog.  I just figure I had no “real” information to give so why try to draw too much attention to the topic.

I still have no real information to give, but I wanted to start giving some insight to the process.   Mostly so I don’t forget.  I do feel like this will be an interesting adventure for us Davis’ and I want to remember what it was all like.

Eventually I’ll fill you all in on the IP (intended parents) I’ve met over the last few months and how those meetings went, but for now I want to talk about how my family is taking all of this.

In general family has been supportive.  Some were less supportive then others, but not because they are against the idea of surrogacy, but because they were worried about the toll it could take on me (emotionally and/or physically).  But again, it’s not really them I want to talk about either.  It’s my kids.

I know, surprise, she wants to talk about her kids.

But really, they have taken it all surprisingly well.

I was worried how they would handle this.  Can they grasp the idea that mommy will be having a baby and then not bringing it home?  So here is essentially how we explained it all to them (Elijah not included…he was there, but he’s 3 so he doesn’t really get it yet).

We (well Justin) watches a precious little girl named Sophie most Wednesday’s for a couple of our friends.  My kids adore Sophie and love when she visits.  I told them, “You know how Sophie comes over for a little while so Daddy can take care of her?”

Kids: Yes
Me: Well, do we get to keep Sophie?
Kids: No, she’s Mrs. Kim’s baby
Me: Right.  So mommy is going to help take care of a baby for somebody
Kids: Who?
ME: A mommy and daddy that can’t have their own baby.  Maybe the mommy is sick so she can’t grow a baby.  So they are going to put the baby inside mommy’s belly so I can take care of it for a little while.
Kids: And then you have to give the baby back?
Me: Yep.  I’ll take care of the baby for a little bit like when we watch Sophie then I have to give it back.  But the baby will be in my belly so you won’t get to play with it like Sophie.  But you can talk to it and sing to it and help me take care of it.  And when the baby comes out we get to give it back to its mommy and daddy.

They seemed to get it.  The only problem is now at least once a week or so they ask if the baby is in my belly yet.  This also resulted in a deeper conversation with Taylor later about why some mommies can’t have babies…yeah that was a fun one.

The first time this question was asked one of the girls started crying when I told them no because they wanted to talk to the baby right now.  I told them I would tell them as soon as I have a baby in my belly.  This of course has not stopped the question, but I just keep reminding them I’ll let them know when it all goes down.

Also, if you would like to catch up on the other Surrogacy related blog posts (there really haven’t been many) I’ve added a tag of Surrogacy to them all and I thinks somewhere on my blog there is a way to click that tag to see all the posts (I really don’t know how this works, can you tell?)

So Sayith Tay and Jay #46 (For Hazel)

Sometimes our kids learn some important life lessons.  On Saturday we were supposed to head to the beach, but I got a call from my mom and knew she was having a bad day so instead Taylor and I headed to her house to surprise her and just love on her.  Taylor asked why and we talked about how when we love somebody very much sometimes we put aside the "fun" things in life to take care of them and make them happy.

Then today I heard about Hazel.

I'm sure you've heard about Hazel.  I saw her story today and read her mom's blog.  So tonight the So Sayith Tay and Jay blog is a note to Hazel.  To show Hazel that the Davis' are praying for her and taking time from the "fun" things (although my kids sure did have fun writing her the letters) to show her that we care about her and want to make her happy.

So this is for Hazel.

Jordan:

Hazel, I love you. (picture of a butterfly eating a raisin...makes sense?)

Taylor:

Hazel, I luv you. Jesus luvs you. (picture of Taylor and Hazel with long princess hair)

Growing A Garden

So Taylor brought home a plant of some sort on her last day of Kindergarten.  She has no idea what it is, but its been growing.

The girls have been fighting over who gets to water it so I figured why not make an activity out of it and let the girls plant their own.

Step 1: Get some old wipe containers

Step 2: Decorate the old wipe containers

Step 3: Shovel in some dirt

Step 4:  Plant the Seeds

Step 5: Wait, Water, Grow

4th of July

First I want to say that 4th of July started my 11 day vacation.  I told Taylor I had 11 days off of work and she said, "that means we are going camping right? Because last summer you had 11 days off and we went camping"

Although she was right about last year we were not camping.  I'll get to that stuff later though.

For now we are talking about 4th of July.

For our 3rd year now we packed the car and headed to Riverside to the Keys' house where we can sit and watch the fireworks/mountain burning.  The kids started with some pool time and played super well together.  It was nice having baby Austin crawling around to and think last year he was still hangin' out in momma's belly.

Scott and Rachel had some great grub (I mean seriously they ALWAYS have great grub) and Rachel even made homemade 4th of July Popsicles.  They tasted great even though it ended up being quite an event to get them to come out.

After dinner we had some fun with sparklers with the kids and then settled down for fireworks.  It was a lot of fun.  I did miss the Webster's this year, but I'm sure they were having a ton of fun visiting Tawni's mom this year.  I'm super glad my blog stalking of the Keys' and Webster's turned into these great friendships where my family gets to create these awesome memories with theirs.