"Guess who's back, back again, Chris is back, tell a friend."
"How long have you been waiting to break that one out?" Stephanie asked, looking over at him.
"Um, I totally just thought of it on the fly, why would you even think I planned that?" he asked.
"Because I know you," she told him, laughing as she looked at the cameras in front of her, smiling cheesily. "Yes, we're back, and we're…well, I'm bigger than ever."
"She still looks great though, even if she can't see her feet anymore. It's fine though, I put on her socks for her, and I tie her shoes."
"He could be putting two different shoes on my feet, and if there are no mirror around, I wouldn't even know," Stephanie said.
Amy smiled at the two of them, "So how's the pregnancy going, Stephanie? You're a lot farther along than the last time we saw you."
"Everything is going really well," Stephanie placed her hand on her abdomen. She was so big right now that she felt like she was her own planet. "Well, if you call two people stepping all over my bladder and crushing my insides as going well."
"We have two athletes in there. I think they hold mock wrestling matches or something from what Stephanie tells me. I've had them kick my hand pretty hard too, they really want to make their presences known."
"Which they do all the time," Stephanie said, "but health-wise, we're all doing well. I'm at 34 weeks right now, so I'm about six weeks from full-term, but I'm actually kind of on baby watch as it is because I'm having twins, and so there's a chance that I could go into premature labor. I've cut down my hours at work, I mostly work from home right now, I only go into the office once a week for meetings, and Chris has been taken off house shows, so it's really almost just a waiting game at this point."
"And how are the two of you?"
"Well, since you last saw us, Chris and I started to really figure out our relationship. We know a lot of people were telling us to get together, after watching some of the episodes, they were so adamant that we get together, and that we get married and everything."
"Well, did you get married?" Amy asked.
"No, we are not married," Chris said, "but even before the first episode of the show aired, we've been together, and so we've been dating for a couple months now, and things are going really great between the two of us, just as good as the babies are doing."
"So you're dating and happy?"
"Very," Stephanie nodded, "so here we are again, and I guess the show is going to be slightly different from now on, but we hope you enjoy this little peek into our lives before our babies come into this world."
"So this is the nursery," Stephanie stood in front of the door. "Right now, the babies will be sharing a room because it's just more practical that way. Hopefully their schedules will be somewhat similar because the only problem would be if one wakes up the other. Still, having two rooms for newborns seems too much, but eventually we'll move them into separate rooms."
"Just open the door, Steph," Chris laughed, kissing her cheek. "You should have seen her with this room. I was paint samples and what furniture to get. I mean, I didn't mind because I helped, but she wanted it to be perfect."
"They're my kids," Stephanie said, "I just wanted everything to be beautiful and wonderful for them."
Stephanie opened the door to the room and led the camera crew inside. The walls were a striped light gray and pale yellow with white trim, and there were two white painted cribs side by side against one wall. On the other wall was a matching dresser and diaper table. The room itself had a teddy bear theme, which was her choice, but Chris had a lot of say with the baby clothes, which was why there were custom Beatles onesies in the drawer with Amelia and Brant's names on them.
"So this is the nursery, and I think it's really calming and everything, and I just love it in here already," Stephanie said, smiling as she looked around. "I really can't wait to see them in this room, and I just want to hold my kids."
"She's saying this now because we don't have two crying, pooping monsters around. Come visit us in about three months, and see if we're singing that same tune," Chris said. "One of the fun features of the room though, since I had to add my touch, is on the mobiles, if you'll look closely, they are all wearing band t-shirts of my favorite bands."
"And what about the music," Stephanie prompted him.
"Oh yeah, the music," Chris said excitedly, winding up one of the mobiles. It started playing In My Life. "This one is Amelia's." He walked up to the other one and wound it up. This one started playing I Want You (She's So Heavy), "And this one is Brant's."
"Chris had to add his flair to it, but I love it, and it's not traditional, so it's got that cool factor," Stephanie said, holding onto her back as it started to ache from all this standing up. "We wanted it to be cute, but we also wanted to infuse a little bit of us in here, and so there are little touches around that make it ours."
"So now that you two are together, do you think anything has really changed?" Amy asked Chris.
"Yeah, actually, there is stuff that's changed, I kiss Stephanie a lot more now so that's something new. We're still figuring this out, of course the curve is a little different with us because she's nearly 8 months pregnant with my children, but we're still taking this relatively slow."
"Is that by design or just how things are going?"
"By design, I think, I just think we both want to make sure that we're doing this the right way, that we're taking our time. We don't really have to get to know each other, but there's a transition period that we're both going through."
"First day of filming, done," Chris said as he flopped down onto the couch next to Stephanie. "Luckily all we had to do was show off the nursery and do some interviews, that was easy enough, don't you think?"
"I'm so glad there's only going to be a month and a half of this and then we're done," Stephanie said, wincing again. The babies were so heavy that her back was in constant pain. Chris recognized this and started massaging her lower back as she moaned gratefully. "Thanks."
"Hey, it's my job to make sure you are as comfortable as possible," he told her, kissing her side of her neck. "And this will be over before you know it, we might not even need the month and a half if the babies come early."
"I hope they come as soon as I hit 37 weeks," she confessed, "because you have no idea what it's like to carry them around, I feel like I'm going to tip over all the time, and my back is killing me, and my feet swell up, and I can't even sleep anymore."
"I know, you end up sleeping half on top of me half the time," he joked, but she turned to glare at him, "sorry, sorry, sometimes I forget that you are carrying two human beings inside your body, and that it's my fault because I put them there."
"Yeah, well, I guess that part was pretty fun," she said as he hugged her from behind.
"It's only a couple more months, and we're done with this and we get to have two new kids in the process."
"Are you as nervous as I am?" Stephanie asked. "I'm really starting to get nervous now. It's like, I thought I was fine before, but I'm really getting nervous now."
"You sure you want to have this conversation right now?" Chris wondered. "This feels like the type of conversation that we should be having in front of the camera. Very special episode, are Chris and Stephanie really ready for parenthood, are they really on the same page about everything? Tune in to find out!"
"Is that when we stage a fight like we're on the verge of breaking up?"
"Yes, and I propose a crazy idea like we break up and each get a kid. It'd be like the Parent Trap, but without the identical twins."
"So which one would you get?" she asked.
"Um, Amelia, I think, Daddy's girl and all that."
"So I get the Mama's boy?"
"Exactly," he said, hugging her tighter.
She had to admit that this relationship with Chris was going better than she ever could have expected. She really didn't know if they were going to work when they first started dating, and she knew she had her doubts, but she and Chris were proving the doubts in her head wrong. They fell into a routine that seemed so natural that she wondered why they didn't try this sooner, why they didn't go about this the traditional way. Granted, she wouldn't trade Amelia or Brant for anything, but maybe she could have tried the dating then the kids.
"Are you happy with me?"
"Wow, this really would have been a great episode. You sure you don't want to save this for that? Your dad would eat it up."
"I'm just wondering, I just want to make sure that this last month and a half is without drama, I mean, at least real drama, who knows what kind of orchestrated drama they may want us to cook up. Oh, maybe they'll have my dad suddenly think you're not good enough for me, and you and him have some big blowout."
"Or we get in a huge fight, and you ban me from the delivery room, and I have to find some way to make things right so I can see the birth of my children," he told her, and she laughed. His voice turned serious for a moment, "I'm really happy. I'm glad we figured it out on our own and not because of the people watching our show, that would have been embarrassing."
"What would? To be told that we were perfect for each other?" she asked.
"Wait, you think we're perfect for each other now?" he asked, grinning a little bit.
"Oh, get off your high horse, Chris," she told him, leaning back against him and nudging him in the stomach. "I think we are pretty perfect because we made two pretty perfect little people who we get to meet soon."
"I think the fans are going to be pretty surprised when they find out we're actually together, people will like, really be kind of rooting for us," he said, just now thinking about how people would like them like they liked onscreen relationships on TV shows. "Do you think that we're going to become like the Kardashians?'
"Dear God, no."
"So how are things going with you and Chris, and you can tell the truth since Chris isn't here," Amy winked at Stephanie, who rested both her hands on her stomach.
"He's everything I could have wanted and didn't know I needed. I'm really glad we gave this thing a chance because I love being with him, I love being around him, and talking to him, and having him around to joke with, and knowing he's going to be the best dad possible."
"Sounds like you love him." She hadn't really thought that far ahead, but when she thought about it, wasn't this love? They were building a life together, and it was beyond friendship now. She went to sleep next to him, and woke up to his face. They laughed together, and he cooked for her, and he would randomly kiss her, which was one of her favorite things. They were truly a unit now, working together, and she liked it, she liked the change, and she couldn't imagine not having become more than friends. Wasn't that love?
"Maybe I do."