The Cramer Family

When we first introduced the boys to coloring we bought them a box of dollar store crayons. We were living the poor student life and if it could be found at the dollar store we were all over it.

The crayons were poor quality.

That’s an understatement and a half, but in the interest of sounding somewhat educated that’s the phrase that I’m going to stick with. Everytime you even touched one of those cheap sticks of wax it would break. Looking at it wrong would bread it. Coloring on the bench in church would end with Tammy and me hunting through all the cracks on the bench for every last scrap of crayon.

Now that I’m making a little more money we splurged and bought a box of Crayola Crayons. What a difference a buck or two makes! Oh don’t get me wrong, we can still break the crayons, they aren’t bars of iron. But it actually takes some thinking and planning on the boys part. Were before it was unfortunate accident, now it’s malicious intent.

But we do love to color.

For several months now the boys have been able to climb into their own cribs. In fact, it is something they demand. If you try to put them in the crib you are going to be in big trouble, I’ll tell you that right now. Now even though they’ve been able to climb in, we’ve tried to convince them that they can’t climb out without our help. And it’s been working so far. We’ve been able to use their cribs for timeouts and not worry about them coming down.

Owen has seen through the deception. His crib doesn’t lower as much as Braeden’s so he has figured out that he can get out of the crib on his own. Last night after we had put them to bed we shut the door and were waiting at the top of the stairs to listen for any crying. There was a lot of creaking from Owen’s crib, and then suddenly THE DOOR TO THEIR ROOM OPENED! Yep, Owen had gotten out on his own. Thinking it might be a fluke we put him back in the crib, but you guessed it, he got out again. I don’t remember what finally kept him in there, but it was an exciting night.

I’m having conflicting feelings right now. On the one hand I’m proud of my boy for growing, developing and bettering himself. On the other, we are losing the humane baby prison that has served us so well. Now we are going to have to tie doors shut or buy handcuffs (This is all just a joke, before I get in trouble). The thing about twins is, as soon as one has learned to do something, the other one isn’t far behind. I think they have nightly debriefing sessions to see how the day went.

O: “How are we doing on the dog?”

B: “I got three kicks and two body slams. How is your progress in the fridge?”

O: “I was able to pull a full pitcher of juice onto the floor but I think there is room for improvement, the floor didn’t get nearly as sticky as I thought it would.”

B: “K, you keep working on that and I’m going to try to get some ink.”

I’ve been getting a lot of comment spam lately so I’ve turned the commenting to administrative approval. I am impressed with Wordpresses ability to catch the majority of spam but after letting a few online gambling things through I am making the change.

Braeden and Owen have the cutest little phrase. They have not quite figured out the distinction between “you” and “me” and so when we are getting ready to go up to bed one of them will turn to me and say “Carry you?” meaning that they want me to carry them up to bed. It’s just really cute having a little tiny kid ask if you want to be carried

We sold the iPod that I got from the Gratis site. Go eBay!! With the money that we got from that sale I purchased a Sony DSC-W1 and we are loving it! The worst part is the small memory card that came with it. I mean 32MB, who would ever only need that! But we are loving the small size and the quality of the pictures. It even takes short movies so we are going to get some of those out there too. Now I need a better way to get them out there quickly so that there are actually useful to people. Is flickr the way to go?

Here’s some samples that we’ve taken so far

and of course a movie

Drinking Ice Cream Requires Windows Media Player to view

Yesterday we made a family trip to the Hogle Zoo. I had an interview with the head of the Informatics department at the University of Utah. He wanted to tell me that I would be expected to participate in the class and take it for credit. It’s unfortunate that enough people have done the opposite that he would need to tell me this. So I took a trial run on UTA by leaving at 5:23 am to get up to campus by 7:30. And I’ll tell you what, that bus ride made me want to vomit in my own mouth, literally. Yep, turns out that I don’t do to well on hot buses with leadfoot drivers. I made it fine through the first two hours, but at hour 2.5 I’d had enough. Fortunately it was ninja vomit, and I kept it all to myself, which is probably more than anyone reading would ever want to know. But who ever reads?

The zoo was a mixed amount of fun. Overall I’d give it good ratings, however Owen and Braeden where not in the best of moods off and on throughout the day. Both of them are developing such unique personalities which if very good, but it does lead to more fights about different things. The latest point of contention is ownership. Having discovered that attaching the word “my” in front of any object instantly makes it yours, the boys have begun to mark their respective territory. Interestingly enough the actual item doesn’t seem to matter, as ownership of a particular matchbox could be switched several times throughout the day, rather it is the mere fact that “I own something that you don’t” is just soo dang cool.

So throughout the zoo the boys would pick items and say “My (insert item here)” at which Braeden/Owen who didn’t have (insert totally cool, have to have item here) in their possesion would get very angry. So here’s how it goes.

b: Braeden o: Owen

b: Baba?
o: NO, MY BABA!
b:NO, MY BABA!!
me: k, here’s a baba for both of you!
ob(unison): NO, MY BABA!!!

I mean how can you argue with that logic? I try, but it never really gets me anywhere.

So aside from the occasional Brother vs Brother deathmatch stroller fighting, and the brief moment of shear terror when Braeden squeezed through a fence (not into a cage or anything, just past a railing between a path and a 30 million foot drop!!) the trip was a lot of fun. The boys fell asleep on the car ride home so they wouldn’t take naps after that, but all in all I would say it was a very successful trip.

Could have done with out the vomit though.

The boys are learing to be “Mom’s best little helpers”. Granted, they are the reason that everything can get so dirty, but they are usually pretty willing to help us clean everything up. After dinner they will each grab a broom and start singing “Clean up, Clean up…blah blah gibblededeee”. It’s so cute. Hopefully that is something they keep with them through out there life. It will definately help them us happy. I wish that I was better about seeing things that needed to be cleaned and then just doing it.

We took the boys to the doctor the other day and they are doing great. I don’t like the whole shot thing, but it is for the best. It’s one of those “You have to laugh or you’ll cry” type of things. We got the boys measured and they are going to be basketball players for sure!

• Owen 100% height - 60% weight
• Braeden 97% height - 50% weight

Tall and skinny, let’s hope they keep going that way. I’m trying to get that way myself, and let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to eat a cheesburger than it is to run it off. The nice thing about the gym is the TVs all around. My thing about running has been how boring it was. In the gym I can watch the news while I’m eliptical training, got to love multi-tasking

We are taking Owen off of his Noni this weekend. It was getting to the point where it was affecting his teeth, so we decided to get rid of it. Poor kid. We decided to start Saturday Morning. He didn’t take a nap that day, instead he spent the time saying “Noni, noni” over and over and looking around the house for it. Very sad, but it turned out to be a good thing, because by the time it was bedtime, Owen was exhausted. Yesterday was pretty good too, he took his nap great, but then had a really hard time going to sleep. Hopefully today will get even better and he’ll be able to sleep tonight.