I have lots of pictures to post, and as soon as I remember to bring the cable I need to work, there will be pictures! In the meantime... John Dickson has been making his family rounds.

His Granna and Papa came up for valentines day to give us the chance to go out... we didn't even remember how to go out?!? Fortunately, it was like riding a bike. Anyway, they brought John Dickson's tuxedo that he will be sporting to a few weddings this summer. He may not be allowed to walk down the aisle with a tiny pillow and fake rings for Aunt Lauren and Uncle Jared, but he'll still look the part! He thought his Papa was pretty funny, and spent a lot of time trying to impress him. John Dickson would do something you could tell that he clearly thought was silly, and he kept looking over at his Papa to see if he was watching. It's interesting to see who he decides he wants to impress, but it seems to be his Papa and his Uncle Jared. But that kid always LOVES an audience!

This past weekend we went down to Columbia for my dad's birthday. The grandparent names seem to change all the time in the Propst household, but I hope we've settled on Grammy and Grumps. So we'll go with that for now. John Dickson, once again, was terrified of his Grumps! We've never been able to figure out what exactly that is all about, but its really strange. All little kids adore my dad, but John Dickson is completely scared! He did warm up to him after a little while, and even allowed himself to be alone in the room with that scary grandpa.
Lauren and I made a shirt for my dad when we were little with our handprints on it that said "Love pats for our daddy". So John Dickson recreated the shirt with love pats for his grandpa. This was actually really fun for us to do, as John Dickson loved sticking his hands in the paint. Getting him to uncurl his fingers was a slightly different story. The shirt was made with love... but it wasnt pretty :-)
Anyway, John Dickson was in an incredible mood this weekend, and he had a lot of fun in Columbia.

I don't think a day has gone by in the past 10.5 months where we have not heard how much John Dickson looks like his Grumps. This past weekend my mom pulled out my dad's baby pictures and we all had a look. Surprisingly, John Dickson looks NOTHING like baby Grumps. It's all very strange. However, there are pictures of me as a baby that are so entirely dead on, they are identical to John Dickson. I will have to see if I can take a picture or scan them or something. Its crazy! Adam thinks all of this is very funny... that my dad looks like a baby, and that I looked like a boy. I noticed the resemblance to my memory of what I look like in my baby pictures, when John Dickson was dressed in pink, but I had no idea just how much we looked the same until I saw the pictures again!

We took John Dickson to the park recently and helped him go down the slide. He seemed slightly amused, but mainly just confused.

You know the kid is growing up at the speed of light, so every day there seems to be a new development - these are the latest:

- John Dickson is a clapping MACHINE!!!! He started clapping with us a week ago, but daddy/John Dickson time on Saturday was spent doing nothing but clapping, I'm pretty sure, and now he is a champ! And he does it to show he is happy too, which is really cute.
- John Dickson is a standing MACHINE!!! Well, he stands. He's gotten really good at standing when we put him on his feet and let go. He'll stand for maybe 10 seconds, and he has even bent down and picked up a toy and continued standing. I really hadn't seen him stand by himself, other than once or twice a while back, so seeing him do that was really weird for me! It looks like an optical illusion, because of course that's not really my child, standing, all by himself...
- He has started to really really think about what he wants to do. He will see a toy across the room and stop and stare at it for probably a minute or two before he decides whether or not he wants to go for it. After he eats his dinner, we let him hold his empty jar and spoon, and he tries really hard to get the spoon in the jar. It takes him a few tries, but you can literally watch him think about how to get that spoon in, and he gets it! He doesn't have a fluid motion of jar to mouth, but he definitely knows what to do with the spoon.

I think that is about it! Other than that, John Dickson is down to 1 bottle a day - his bedtime bottle, and he hasn't even had that in 3 days. We're trying to turn that into a sippy cup as well. The last 2 nights he has given himself the cup and gone to sleep in the car (late night travels!), so tonight will be the first time at home. We'll see how it goes... Also on that note, last night is the first time John Dickson has EVER EVER not woken up in the transition from the car seat to the crib. We weren't expecting it at all, but didn't want to wake up that exhausted little guy! So he slept in his blue jeans last night... I loved just carrying him into the house sound asleep! It was too precious.