Happy Birthday Aric

I can't believe my December baby is 21 years old. It doesn't seem like that long ago that he was born. He spent the first four days of his life in the NICU. I still remember when the nurse knocked on my door and said "there is someone here to see you" and handed him to me. I picked him up and he just snuggled into me.



I brought him home from the hospital in a little blue suit with zoo animals on it and then promptly dressed him up like an elf. He was jaundiced for a couple of days. He was a yellow elf in a green elf suit. Carter and Alex thought he was pretty cute. He was a good baby.

AJ had some funny little habits when he was little. For a couple of months he thought he was a Dalmatian puppy and insisted on eating out of a dog dish, he didn't talk he barked and panted. Then there was his OBSESSION with sprinklers. He loved sprinklers. To the point we bought him sprinklers for his birthday. He would sleep with this huge metal rain bird and even took it on a plane ride. The flight attendant tried to take it from him and he let out the most blood curdling scream. She let him keep it. (Another one of his peculiarities, he could scream like no other child. People would stop and stare and more than one mother said "thank goodness he isn't mine.) The neighbors used to knock on our door when their sprinklers went missing because AJ would unscrew them and take them from their yards. We would go through his toy box to find their sprinklers. Then there was his "bathtub phase." He insisted on sleeping in the bathtub in a sleeping bag. This went on for several weeks. We only had one bathroom upstairs and it drove Carter crazy. If he got up to go to the bathroom at night AJ was always asleep in the bathtub. He felt this was a violation of his privacy so we had to keep the shower curtain pulled.



When AJ was about five he hit his Eeyore stage. He was a worrier and he always had a bad day. He snapped out of that in about third grade and became happy again.



Hanging out at the beach. He was a great teenager with awesome friends and never got into trouble!

Bowling with family.

Happy birthday Aric Cramer Junior, AJ, Aje, Stro, Aric. We are glad you joined our family.