Baby's First Charity Event

This is a public declaration of what an AWESOME little princess I have.

As a bit of background, I am a self-proclaimed workaholic who has been know to test the limits of my own ambition. It could be because I work in Public Relations, maybe. It could be because I'm nuts. I have a tendency to take on a lot.

Well before I was preggers I was working on a charity event - a walk fundraiser to raise money to place Dog Guides with people who have disabilities. These are more than the seeing-eye dogs that you are probably familiar with. The organization that we were supporting, helps people are visually impaired as well as people who are deaf (with hearing ear dogs) or physically disabled (with special skills dogs). Check out their site.

Anyway, I was so vested in making it come to fruition that I signed on as the Volunteer Committee Chair to head up a group of local volunteers in my "spare time". And then there was baby. Because God is a comedian, she was scheduled to join us on earth before the first annual charity event.

So what's a mom to do? I couldn't NOT help with the event. Although I was MIA for the weeks after I had the Baby, the team and my co-chair did an amazing job of pulling everything together. I got back into it this last week to help as much as I could.

And today I brought Baby to her first ever charity event - at the ripe age of 5 weeks.

Baby was amazing. I am astonished, grateful, impressed that she was so good the entire day. We arrived at the venue at 7:30 am and left at 2:30 pm. I really wanted her there with me throughout the day, because I'm breast feeding and not ready to put her on a bottle. The great new is that Baby was perfect throughout the 7 hour day. She didn't cry once and was amazing!!

We worked out some of the logistics beforehand. I had an office designated as baby zone for changing, feeding and quiet time where we could sneak away every few hours. We brought her stroller (the Quinny Buzz base and Maxi Cosi car seat) and our carrier. I know that she could sleep for ages in her car seat and the carrier was invaluable for when she was awake. I loved keeping her close to me but having the flexibility and free hands to take care of other things.

It was a great day. We raised over $25,000 (the final numbers are still being tabulated) and Baby stole the show. We had hundreds of people cooing over her. She loved the attention. I, personally, couldn't be happier.

~ humps