I've been meaning to write about the day Elizabeth told me she was pregnant (and NO, it wasn't during the Big Game, as the Guy's Guide to Pregnancy said it would be!), but kept forgetting to do it. Since I'm keeping track of the different stages of "our" pregnancy (is it cheesy to say that? I ain't knocked up!), I figured I'd start at the first day we knew about it.

Ironically, it was April 1st. April Fool's Day.

Elizabeth met me after work that day, and we headed over to Chapel Hill. She had some sort of alumni thing at one of the Chapel Hill stores -- a sale to raise money for the occupational therapy program. I'd talked to her on the phone, and she hadn't said anything about taking a pregnancy test.

This is probably Too Much Information, but we'd been "trying" to get pregnant since the start of this year, so we had bought a couple of those pregnancy tests off an on earlier this year. Those suckers are expensive! One of the tests Elizabeth had gotten was the new-fangled digital readers, that actually display the word "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant" as opposed to the line or double line of the old-school testers. This is important later.

So the first weird thing I notice is that when Elizabeth comes to pick me up is that we're dressed like frickin' twins -- I'm wearing a black shirt and olive pants, and she's got on a black sweater and olive pants. Sometimes this whole brain-sharing part of being married freaks me out.

Still she hasn't told me she's taken a pregnancy test.

We take the backroads over to Chapel Hill, avoiding the heinous traffic of I-40, and I throw out ideas for which restaurants we could eat at (Chapel Hill has lots of places to choose from, unlike the chain-filled landscape of North Raleigh, where we live). We decide on Pepper's Pizza, a cool little hole-in-the-wall place on Franklin Street.

Still no hint of her knowing about the baby-on-the-way.

Finally, we park and cut through the alley past the Rathskeller to get to Franklin Street. We were talking about living in Chapel Hill (my dream, someday). When we step onto Franklin Street, Elizabeth turns to me and asks "Would you like to raise your kids in Chapel Hill?"

I'm like, "Sure, of course," and meanwhile she's pulling something out of her pocket. She brought along the digital readout to the pregnancy test (um, minus the "pee stick"), and she hands it to me.

Of course, the readout has disappeared -- it only lasts for 1/2 an hour. But I get the picture.

I was shocked for a split second once I realized what Elizabeth was trying to tell me, then I grabbed her in a big hug. All in all, it was a very cool way to let me know. And we got to eat pizza afterwards!

The whole dinner we sort of kept looking at each other with shell-shocked expressions, as if we couldn't really believe this was happening. It's scary, but really exciting. And then I realized what day it was, and had to have Elizabeth reassure me that this wasn't some elaborate April Fool's prank. Now that would've been Cruel. With a capitol C.

Then Elizabeth went off to her sale, and I went to Caribou Coffee and wrote a frenetic, excited, caffeine-induced, three-pages-plus journal entry about being a father. A dad.

I'm a little freaked out, thinking about that day, because it seems like a long time ago already. We've both adjusted to becoming parents pretty quickly, I think. I guess it's true what every parent says -- you don't know what you did BEFORE the kids came along.