Thank you thank you THANK YOU to everyone who donated! Your generosity will help mamas and babies have healthy, full term pregnancies. Although the walk is over (and thus your chance to make me suffer personally is past), donations and volunteers are always welcome.

Our weather on Saturday was picture-perfect – low humidity, hours and hours of sunshine, warm enough for shorts, which is unusual in Connecticut in April. Unfortunately, the walk was Sunday. Not such good weather – rain, rain, and more rain, but it didn’t stop tons of people from showing up. I briefly considered leaving Baby Evan home (with E of course, not tied to a chair or something) but decided marching with my baby would be more fun. And it was, except for the fact that my stroller doesn’t have a rain shield so I hauled his chubby butt 3 miles in a backpack carrier. It was…a really good workout. And I definitely think I deserve extra credit for doing it pregnant.

Here are the pictures I took and some of my live-tweeting. I was super excited when @marchofdimes actually tweeted back!

Skeptical baby is skeptical about getting out of the car in the rain

Once I got the baby in his bubble he was warm and dry. Don't worry, it has air holes.

See? Festive!

Sarah with Baby C. She's one of my crazy hippie friends. You can tell by the baby tied to her chest.

Baby A in her Stroller Strides t-shirt. She's not in a cage, just under a bug/rain cover.

Most of our team, ready to get going! Waiting for the "official" start at 10 am was actually the most unpleasant part of the day.

"Low tide" is the nice way to say it. Although one little girl caught a whiff and accused her brother of pooping.

He says he doesn't hate babies, he's just too smart to go wander around in the rain.

Here we go! The backpack worked really well (and was the only one there) but DUDE, my kid is a CHUNK.

True story. And I tripped like 14 times.

Our fantastic Stroller Strides team!

The view from the end of Bluff Point. Nice today, FANTASTIC in good weather.

Bonus backpack feature: it has a stand so I can put him down for a few minutes. THANK GOD.

In the home stretch on the way back! I don't think walking backwards up a hill to take this picture was a wise choice, but it all worked out.

I've never been so happy to see a stupid balloon arch in my life.

And then we all went for Mexican food and lived happily ever after. Except I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick the baby up at all tomorrow. I think I’ll spend the evening researching what kind of heavy duty muscle relaxers are safe to take during pregnancy. There’s got to be some, right?

I have to say, it was a really great experience and such a good cause. I will definitely participate again next year, although I will being praying extra hard for better weather!

You guys are awesome. Amazing. The best readers in the world. Thank you so much for contributing to my March for Babies walk. Our team has raised over $500 in just one week and so far I’ve gotten more donations than any other individual walker. I appreciate your support so so so much. If you tried to use the online form earlier and had unspecified technical trouble, please try again. Every dollar helps ensure babies are born healthy and full-term.

As added incentive for your donations, I’m planning to tweet the whole walk, with updates, complaints, terrible jokes and plenty of adorable baby photos. If you aren’t part of social media 2.o (or whatever version of ridiculously unnecessary connectivity twitter is considered) I’ll rewrite it all as a blog post afterward so everyone can laugh at my suffering. Of course, you can laugh at me for free but won’t it be that much more hilarious if you caused some of it?

And now, some blackmail:

BAM! You’ve just been baby-notized. (That’s hypnotized by babies, in case you couldn’t guess.) First they make you very sleepy, then you act like a fool, then one day you wake up and you don’t even remember what it was like when they were that tiny. And THEN you click on that little purple widget over there ——-> and I love you forever.

The slave driver amazing mom who leads my daily torture Stroller Strides class signed our local chapter up for the March of Dimes March for Babies happening on April 25th and asked for volunteers to walk with her. Now, I love babies (good thing, since this little ginger one seems to hang around me a LOT) but walking? Not so much. Walking in the dirt? Even less. Walking three miles up and down big hills in the dirt? I’d rather have a tooth extracted. Without Novocaine. And yet for some reason I signed up anyways. I think it’s because my desire to help save babies is a lot stronger than my incredibly laziness. I mean, come on, no one DOESN’T want to save babies. What are you, some kind of monster? Do you kick puppies too? If loving babies isn’t enough, check out this picture:

Awwwwwwwww! So cute! Plus like, RESEARCH and SCIENCE and MEDICAL STUFF. The whole point of walking is to raise money for the March of Dimes so this is the part where I ask you for $5 or $10 or $20 or whatever it is you were going to spend on Starbucks tomorrow. My team’s goal is $3000 but I figured if everyone who reads here on a regular basis could give $5 (I CAN SEE YOU, YOU KNOW) I could raise $1000 all by myself and really impress my Stroller Strides class.

You can donate to my walk by clicking on that giant purple widget to the right. Go on, you know you want to. It’s for the children. Such as.