Hello, I'm Stephanie

I don't even know why I'm doing a post about who I am, because pretty much all of you know who I am already. But, here I go.

Hi. I'm Stephanie. Sorry I didn't say so in the first post, but better late than never. This actually reminds me of when I "met" my husband. Yes, we met on www.match.com. We e-mailed each other constantly one day and I realized I didn't even know his first name, so by the end of the day I asked him and he said, "Oh, I'm Aaron. My mother would be so ashamed that I didn't tell you that by now." Or...something like that. I immediately thought to myself, "Nice name...I could totally get used to saying that every day for the rest of my life." Sigh...I know. We knew 2-weeks into dating that we wanted to marry each other. I won't even tell you what he texted me the day after we went out on our first date (it wasn't anything inappropriate, it was actually a very sweet foreshadowing of the little girl we call Ella).

Ella is our 3-month old baby girl who is one of the most beautiful babies I have ever seen in my life. I know, I'm completely biased, but other people have told me the same thing so I'm going with it. It's a year ago right now that I found out I was pregnant (I have a pet peeve when people say "we're pregnant"). I remember testing and thinking I saw two lines but thought I was crazy because I tested early. But sure enough, the next day yielded a darker line and the blood test from the doctor's proved I was indeed pregnant. Now I had a secret that I had to wait to share with my husband until he got home from work. Did I also mention that I had a meeting at my husband's company that day with Embryo? Yeah, that made for an interesting meeting. All I could think about the whole time was, "I'm pregnant! You're sitting across the table from me and you're going to be a dad but you don't know it yet!" So, I had to hold my breath at the meeting as well as the entire ride home from the commuter rail where I picked-up Aaron at the end of the work day.

We walked into the house and I picked up a present under the Christmas tree and said, "Here, Santa left this for you." I said, "I know it's too small for you, but I know someone who can wear this in 9 months." It was a baby hat from his favorite band Phish that I had purchased a month before. Needless to say, we hugged and I told him about how I knew yesterday and it nearly killed me keeping this secret from him but I wanted to be 100% sure. I admit, it was quite thrilling knowing something so huge and keeping it a secret.

Since it was Christmastime we shared the news with our parents who were overjoyed. After the 10-week mark when we heard the heartbeat, we shared the news with our siblings who probably weren't too surprised, but were very excited for both of us. Aaron and I have seven (and counting) nieces and nephews so we were very excited to add to the family. Being an Aunt and Uncle to so many wonderful kiddos gave us some great practice for parenthood...or so we thought.

Next time...more about my nearly trouble-free pregnancy.