Jonathan
Nephew
Jonathan was the first grandchild on both sides of the family and he was an only child for 6 years. We used him to learn how NOT to raise babies. He was completely spoiled and still thinks; 20 years later, that the world revolves around him. When Jon was a baby, my friend Beth lived on an Army base in Augusta. Beth told us about this huge Army yard sale where you could buy lots of good quality baby stuff for nearly nothing. The Army folks move around so much that they frequently have to downsize their belongings. We went down and spent the weekend with Beth and went to the big yard sale and brought back hundreds of baby outfits. We tried each outfit on Jonathan and took his picture. At first, he was pretty pleasant, but after the first 20 or so costume changes, he began to get very angry, and in the later pictures, he is beet red and screaming, but the outfits look stunning on him!
I will admit that I probably wasn’t the best baby sitter they could have found for Jonathan, but I was available and willing. One time when he was at my apartment, I fell asleep on the sofa. When I woke up, Jonathan had crawled over next to a potted plant and had ½ a cricket on his chin. Another time, I decided to take him for a stroll so I strolled him from my apartment to the library which involved walking alongside a major highway with no sidewalk for about a mile and a half. I frequently carried Jonathan on my hip. I used to tell my friends that “a real woman is someone who can hip a baby and take a cake out of the oven at the same time.” Jonathan took his first steps at my apartment. He was pulling up on the dining room chairs while we were eating chicken, so we were feeding him table scraps as though he were a pet. He spotted a tear in the upholstery of one of my chairs. White stuffing was protruding from the tear. Jonathan thought it was chicken, so he let go of the chair that he was holding onto and walked unaided over to the perceived chicken, plucked off a piece and put it in his mouth.
Jonathan developed some sort of problem with his eyes and had to be taken to a specialist. When the doctor started to examine Jon's eyes, he exclaimed, "What big pretty eyes you have!" Jonathan responded, "You have a big nose!"
Jon was quite the athlete in High School. He especially excelled in Soccer and Baseball. He inherited his parent's musical talent. He plays the guitar in a Christian Rock band.
We enjoy traveling with Jon. We took him with us to visit our Army friends in Germany when he was eight. Our next trip with him was to Madrid. He was older than the other children on the trip, so he was a real help to their parents.
Jon is very active in his church. He hopes to enter the ministry someday. He attended the "Word of Life" Bible College in Argentina briefly and has been on several mission trips. We are very proud of him!
