My Challenges: The biggest change is that I need to become healthier! And as mentioned above I would like to be blessed with another baby after Ainsley turns one!

My husband Chris is always up for supporting me through whatever I want to do, and when it involves more fun outdoor activities he loves it!

My Accountability: I of course have my husband Chris, daughter Ainsley, my mom and dad, and I have enlisted a new Canadian Twitter friend Julie to be my comrade. She is a new mom as well and we will be guest blogging on each other’s sites! She runs a great cloth diaper store out of her home in British Columbia (Little Monkey Store)! She has a son that is two weeks older then Ainsley and we definitely rely on each other for mommy tips and trends.

So that is that! Challenge and Accountablity.

Next step the plan. It’s real now!

Remember the song that was so very winey yet stuck in your head for days, it makes me laugh and drives me nuts at the same time? So there are only 13 days left until Christmas and I have not finished my holiday shopping. I have been doing research and here are some items I think are on a family’s must have Santa List! They are definitely on my list!

First off all babies love cloth diapers, who wouldn’t they are soft and squishy! They make your little squiggler look adorable and they are easy to find. Why would I buy cloth diapers? Well they are great for baby and good for the earth! There are so many cute ones but I especially love the red and green ones for the holiday season! There are many retailers out there! I am hoping to someday soon be set up to take orders but for now check out these shops!

Sugar Dipes
Little Monkey Store (based in Canada, but has unique products to USA stores)
Cotton Babies
FuzziBunz

*Accessories that are good to have for cloth diapers are detergent, dryer balls, diaper sprayer, reusable wipes, wipes solution, and pail liners.

Other ideas for a newborn is easy; soft swaddling blankets, durable burp rags, and support supplies for the mommy! (frozen dinners, gift cards, help with laundry/cleaning, massages, & money)

More baby ideas; Some wonderful music for baby to listen to and some black and white patterned toys to work on tracking with their eyes! Talking and Singing with baby are important by now and reading is a great gift. Our daughter loved looking at the bright pictures in Eric Carle’s “Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?” book, And she liked the rhymes of Dr. Seuss books like “There’s A Wocket in my Pocket” and “The Foot Book”.

Older children love to use their imagination! Find some great homemade dolls/action figures/monsters/puppets on Etsy or Artfire websites. You could also get them superhero capes, tutus, or soft blankets to cuddle up with. You can also have a personalized bookmade for them, this has been done for years! I got one when I was little and it was so special! (We ordered an X-Men version for our nephew! I will update on how he likes it after Christmas!)

For the rest of your family there are countless ideas on etsy and artfire. I tried to buy or make all our gifts online this year so that I could support “local” crafters/artisans! For our family we made calendars via iPhoto, ordered scarves and monsters from etsy, ordered diapers from various places, and we got some geeky stuff like iPhone, iPod accessories and apparel! (geek must haves: GriffinTechnology, Radtech, Think Geek)

I hope this might help you in finding some “new” ideas for gifts!
Good Luck and Happy Holidays!

“I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas is a Christmas novelty song written by John Coctoasten and performed by Gayla Peevey in 1953. It is a Dr. Demento Christmas staple, and is currently available on Dr. Demento’s The Greatest Novelty Records of All Time Vol. 6: Christmas.

Here’s an interesting fact about the popular Christmas hippopotamus song – in 1953 a ten-year-old girl from Oklahoma, Gayla Peevey sang the song as a way to raise money for the Oklahoma City Zoo’s first hippopotamus. It became a nationwide hit after that, although John Rox wrote the song “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in 1950! The song was not written specifically for the Oklahoma zoo, its just that when they needed the hippo the song came out so the Christmas hippopotamus song just fitted in.” * This info foundhere

My husband and I recently went on an eight day excursion to Indianapolis to visit his family for Thanksgiving. Being new to cloth diapering I wanted to try and use our cloth diapers as much as possible so that I could encourage others to do the same.We used our Flip diaper with disposable inserts for our plane rides and first day! They did a great job and they were easy to change and dispose of in each airport’s bathroom.

During our visit we used our complete stash; FuzziBunz Perfect size Mediums (2), FuzziBunz OneSize (1), BumGenius AIO (1), a Bummi’s WhisperWrap (1), the Flip (1), 16 disposable Flip inserts, and one Prefold. I did laundry every other day to keep our cloth trials going. In between the cloth we did use disposables and I did only bring disposable wipes. I brought a small bag of Rockin Green Soap to launder the diapers in and my Mother-In-Law’s washer/dryer did great! I used a ziplock bag for a wetbag and a trashbag for our pail liner in an old trash can.

Moral of the story, it can be done! If you have access to laundry services or a large cloth diaper selection you can travel and fully cloth diaper your child. I would say that we had Ainsley in cloth at least 50% of the time, which saved the Indianapolis land fill from getting about 40 disposable non-green diapers! My husband, Ainsley and myself feel pretty good about that!

*We bought these diapers and none of the companies paid us or asked us to write this. None of the websites above asked us to list them, it’s purely from my own experiences.

I have truly amazing life long friends. I am one of those lucky women that has a few very close friends and many acquainatences. My dearest friends and I have been close since we were ten, which is around 21 years.

Through this time you learn alot about yourself, your friends, their strengths and their weaknesses. This week I have seen the strength in two of these women and I just wanted to blog a little about their journey and send my prayers.

My friend S has been my best friend since the day we met. We just clicked. We are complete opposites but we work well together. S had major trauma, involving postpartum psychosis, the first time she gave birth and was very nervous this time around. I am happy to report that all is well and she is doing wonderful with breastfeeding and being mommy to another gorgeous boy!

My other friend, whom we will call C,  has been my friend since the fourth grade, same time I met S. I still remember I wanted to be her friend so badly because she seemed so smart and funny. And she really is a hilarious genius! I even asked if I could spend the night at her house because she explained her secret tunnel and I just had to see it for myself. I was a pushy little girl! Anyways, C decided on doing a homebirth and was in back labor for over 30 hours before going in for a c-section. Today I get a text message from her that she is back in the hospital. She said there was a problem with her incision and while breastfeeding her baby boy her large intestine started to come out of her body. Needless to say this strong woman is doing well in the hospital still breastfeeding her baby boy and trying to recover. I don’t know all the details on her story but she trumps EVERY birth story I have ever heard at least for the first 72 hours!

Please keep my dearest friends in your thoughts and prayers. May God bless and heal their bodies and help them to be successful in their breastfeeding endeavors.

-Freckles (aka: Andrea Maciula Peters)

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I thought this might be a great way to get to know the attending Tweeps. For me, I have never met anyone so it’s nice to recognize people by more than just their Twitter handle.

If you are not shown below please feel free to email me: bones at frecklesandbones.com If you would like a different picture used then email me that info too. The basis of this list is from the Eventbrite page http://stwok.eventbrite.com and Facebook event that Trae Robrock created.

iPhone users can tap and hold the larger image to save. For other’s I can email you a zipped file of all the images if you want.

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I am writing this little blog to thank him for our new site! And all his dedication to our future family!

Love you babe,

Freckles

Chris and I are doing well, just trying to prepare for Christmas Holiday celebrations! Baby Peters is doing good and is so very excited to have a cousin Baby Mac joining it about a month after Baby P enters the world! Congrats Philip & Aleia!!!!! Grammy Mac is all a twitter!!! God truly has blessed us and our families this year! 

I sent out Christmas cards to most of the family members and friends that I had addresses for, so hopefully those will be arriving soon! If you don’t get one, I am sorry, I probably messed up your address! 

If you are in Stillwater this holiday season my mom and I will be singing at 6:30pm Christmas Eve at St Francis, so come listen and sing along! 

I guess that is all for now, I am so very ready to find out what sex Baby P is, so that I can start preparing more! January 5th only a few days away.

As for our friends, we have had a few very close friends that we consider family have very great losses in their lives, so please keep them in your prayers. We adore and love you Linda & Harvey and Amanda & Andrew, we know that God’s will seems to be confusing at times but overall remember his love and we are here for you to lean on. 

God Bless Everyone and Have a Happy Holiday!!!

p.s.  My 30th Birthday is on the 30th, I can’t believe I am already done with my twenties, but I feel great and what a wonderful birthday it will be!!!!

LOVE,

Andrea Maciula Peters

Andrea and I had a great time with friends on Halloween Night. We handed out candy to the trick or treaters and enjoyed some awesome candy apples and hot cider! Thanks to Aaron for hosting!

Maybe the girls might bring some competition next time around. Guys 2, Girls 0