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.

Dear Bathroom Scale,

I’m sorry I will probably break you later this morning when we have our first weigh-in for the fitness challenge at Stroller Strides. In my defense, the morning after the Superbowl is probably the worst Monday of the year to expect me to have lost weight.

Exhibit A:

The Pioneer Woman's Jalapeno Poppers

Exhibit B:

Quesadillas by Amanda

Exhibit C:

The Pioneer Woman's Drip Beef (not pictured, buttered sandwich rolls and cheese)

Exhibit D:

Fruit Pizza by Amanda - don't be fooled by the "fruit" part, it's shortbread and frosting and chocolate

Not pictured: Taco dip, brownies, three kinds of chips, cheese and crackers, veggies with ranch dip, shrimp cocktail, and my favorite baked potato rounds covered in cheese and bacon.

And let’s not forget my best excuse of all:

BABY WEIGHT

So there, Scale. Those are my excuses. I’ll try to do better next week I promise. Of course I mean AFTER E’s birthday dinner and a special Valentine’s treat.

xoxo

Suzanne

UPDATE: RECIPE LINKS

Jalapeno Poppers – Pioneer Woman

Drip Beef Sandwiches – Pioneer Woman

Amanda’s Website – Funny Days with Mommy & Maddie

UPDATE: I weighed exactly the same as last week. So no harm, no foul, leftover drip beef for lunch!

Eight is how many push-ups I could do in one minute at yesterday’s Get Fit Challenge testing for my Stroller Strides class. They weren’t even good push-ups, although they were real on-my-toes push-ups. Still, anyone who’s ever been through boot camp would have been ashamed of my wimpy noodle arms. I did slightly better on holding a plank position (1 minute 7 seconds) and did a fairly respectable number of crunches (53 in one minute). There was also a shuttle sprint where I ran with a baby shampoo bottle baton from one line to another and back again, all while flailing my arms and legs around in the least coordinated way possible, a la Phoebe from that episode of Friends. Being laughed at by a bunch of toddlers isn’t very good for one’s ego.

In 12 weeks I retry all those tests to see how much I’ve improved my fitness. April, my instructor, also took “before” pictures in which I slouched and scowled as much as possible so my “afters” are guaranteed to be an improvement, even if it’s just because I’m wearing mascara and sucking in my gut. Then she made us run a bazillion flights of stairs, do an insane number of lunges, and kicked out butts motivated us to really focus on being strong mamas.

12 weeks from now is May (MAY! That’s a whole month after APRIL, when my baby will be ONE) and May means skirts and tank tops and no more strategically fashionable scarves to hide my extra chin so it’s a good time to finally be back in (almost) good shape. The fitness tests are a really tangible way to see how I’m doing and a much less depressing measure than my weight, which seems to be glued in place with the world’s strongest super glue.

At least I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be able to do more than eight push-ups.

My BFF Erin and her 7 month old baby Reid came to visit us this weekend. Since I am a terrible friend, I made her go to my workout class on Saturday, let Baby Evan steal all her kid’s toys and then gave Reid the flu. Seriously, I’m surprised she’s still speaking to me. Although if she ever threatened to stop being my friend I could always blackmail her with those photos I have from college. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

After Stroller Strides but before the puking the babies did have a pretty good time in our mall’s play area. It’s surprisingly nice (considering how crappy the mall is as a whole) with a cushioned floor, not too many people and stuff to entertain kids from crawling to kamikaze face diving running. We’ll be making it a regular part of our routine.

Space, the final frontier. Imma go there in this awesome plane!

I'm so stylish my binkie matches my outfit. My mom pretends it's just coincidence but it's totally not.

All weekend people kept telling us the babies looked like brothers. I think it's just the chubbiness.

This is my pensive face. I'm considering pooping in this car. Oh wait, just did.

This IS playing together. I stomp on the little kid, he licks this giant pig. Hey it works for us.

So you know what’s really really boring? Listening to people talk about their diets and workout plans and weight loss goals and OMG this new dance-yoga-spinning-butter-churning class they just signed up for at the gym. So I apologize in advance for this post.

I have never ever been good at dieting. That’s not to say I’ve never been SUCCESSFUL at dieting, I’m just not very good at it. My strategy has always been more exercise, not less dessert, which worked well for me when I was 20, after this I even tried some appetite suppressants from West Word which help me a lot with this. It’s not hard to find time for yet another class at the gym when your biggest problem in life is finding an after-hours bar because a 2 am last call is, like, SOOOOOO lame.

Then, BAM, I got married and spent all my time sitting on a couch instead of at those 7 am Saturday Pilate’s classes. And then, BAM, we moved away from the land of bathing suits and tank tops to Connecticut, where big, baggy sweatshirts are acceptable attire 7 months of the year. And then, BAM, I had a baby and everything that used to point up pointed down and things that used to go in go out and everywhere from my toes to my earlobes streeeetched and now I am without hope.

I could say I’ve been trying to get back in shape for a while now, but that would be mostly false. Sure I joined Stroller Strides and have shown up for class three days a week almost every week since October but trying is too strong of a word for my participation. I’ve doing more strolling than striding. But with Baby Evan’s first birthday on the horizon and my pre-pregnancy jeans still totally unbuttonable it is time to buckle down and DO THIS. And since writing about it on the internet is the best way to make sure as many people as possible hold me accountable, here’s THE PLAN:

1. Attend Stroller Strides at least 5 days a week (and not half-ass my way through the hour).

2. Drink a lot more water and a lot less soda – even the diet kind.

3. Stop buying candy since I am totally incapable of eating a reasonable amount as a treat instead of an entire bag as dinner.

4. Eat breakfast every day.

5. Weigh myself on Saturdays to keep my goals on track.

I know if I tried I could make THE PLAN much more ambitious. If it comes down to it I can put myself on the totally no fun no days off no will to live diet that would get results but also make me a cranky miserable bitch for a few weeks, although it would mean I can go back to just maintaining my weight sooner. It also might mean my husband and child never speak to me again. It’s a hard decision.

Stay tuned for fascinating and enthralling updates and possibly a photo that will scare you out of having children forever. As soon as I have an after (or a middle, or a one seventh of the way through, or a ANY IMPROVEMENT AT ALL) photo to share, I fully intend to post them both. And if you don’t delete me from your bookmarks after that threat, you have no one to blame but yourself. Also, I love you.