The Leichty Life

We had our first ultrasound today.  I was pretty nervous going into it even though I had no reason to suspect any problems.  Thankfully, everything looks perfect!  It was so fun to see the baby’s arms and legs moving around and I cried when they told us that the brain, spine, heart (the heartbeat was a steady 140) and other organs looked just like they’re supposed to look. At one point, he/she moved its hand up and down like it was waving to us.  They had to keep moving the wand around to chase the baby because he/she was moving around so much.    We’re sure that it’s a really cute baby — even in fuzzy black and white.  And we stuck to our decision to wait until delivery to know the gender.  I asked the doctor if he could tell what gender we’re having and all he’d say was “I’m not saying anything”.  We are just thankful that it looks healthy so far and he/she is measuring within a week of our due date, which is perfect.

We are with a practice that has a residency program, so at each dr. visit, we have the faculty doctor and a resident.  We like having the residents there because the doctors explain things to them, which in turn provides us with more information.  We love both doctors that we’ve met and the resident that was assigned to us is wonderful.  She’s expecting a baby in 3 weeks, so she’ll be gone for a little while until her maternity leave is over.  Either way, she should be with us for our delivery in November.

I will sleep much better tonight knowing that Baby Leichty has 2 arms, 2 legs, a perfect spine, perfectly shaped lips and a normal-sized brain.  With us as its parents, the brain could have been an area of concern.

In other news, we got 6 beautiful zucchinis out of our garden.  Zucchini bread is in the oven as we speak.  Yum.

It’s been an interesting week — sad some days, fun other days, and pretty much emotional all the way around.  Last Wednesday, I got a phone call from my friend Cindy saying that a student from EMU whom we had worked with in Residence Life for 3 years, Jon and I sang with on various choir recordings, and a good friend to us and a lot of people, drowned while swimming in Costa Rica.  He was only 22 years old.  Many of you remember this post about Matt Garber…he’s the one who passed away.  He brought a lot of joy to everyone around him and he will be missed.  If you’re interested in reading more about his life, click here.

Our good friend, Matt Hunsberger, came to visit us on Thursday.  He was also good friends with Matt Garber, so we spent some time reminiscing as well as catching up with one another.  It made Jon and I lonesome for Harrisonburg, but we were so thankful for time with Matt. He’s one of those friends that we will never lose touch with.

I met with the high school principal to discuss the possibility of interviewing for the school counseling position I told you all about in a previous post.  I was very prayerful going into the meeting and I prayed specifically that God would help me to know what direction to go.  As I was talking with the principal, it became more and more clear to me that even though a school counseling position will one day work really well for our family because of the hours, vacation time, etc., the idea of putting our kids in full time childcare right now is not appealing.  The timing just isn’t right.  So, I called him yesterday and told him that Jon and I simply weren’t ready to commit to a full time position for me, but that I would love to be considered should they decide to make the position part-time.  That option isn’t likely, but it was worth a shot anyway.  The principal was very kind and affirming of our decision and I felt really good when I got off of the phone.  It’s disappointing to not even interview, but I didn’t want to go through with it out of fairness to the school system.  Why interview when I know I’ll say no if I’m offered the job?  So, that’s the scoop with the school counseling position.

Some happier highlights from the week:

• I attempted to help a friend of Vicki’s out by baking her famous coffee cake while she was recovering from surgery.  She owns a bed and breakfast and needed more of the coffee cakes for her guests.  After two attempts, I had to finally admit defeat because it kept coming out of the pan in chunks.  And yes, I did grease the pan liberally.  I guess this wasn’t a super-happy highlight.  Of course, Jon had to take a picture after my failed second attempt.  You can find the picture in our July folder.
• I picked black raspberries yesterday and the jelly I made this morning is cooling and looking beautiful on my kitchen counter.  We’re going to eat some of the jelly on homemade oatmeal bread this evening…assuming I can get it out of the loaf pan.
• We bought a new washer and dryer because our old ones were falling apart.  I’m doing laundry right now, but you wouldn’t even know it because they’re so quiet.
• We had another Dr.’s appointment last week.  Baby Leichty’s heartbeat was between 140-150 and he/she is growing nicely.  It’s a bad sign, though, when the doctor looks at your weight on the chart and says, “It looks like you’re eating well.”  Nice.
• We have our first ultrasound scheduled for this Saturday at 7:45 a.m.  I can’t wait…and no, we don’t plan to find out what we’re having.  Hopefully we’ll stick to that.
• And last, but certainly not least, my swollen ankle is finally healing and I can walk around the house without breaking into a sweat.  That, my friends, is progress.

It’s finally a beautiful day in Ohio.  We’ve had rain almost every day for the last week with some sunshine mixed in.  The garden and the lawn are growing like crazy…so are the weeds in our garden.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), the garden has been too wet for me to get in there to pull weeds.  I’m afraid I’ll walk in and sink to the earth’s crust.  I’ll let it dry out a little today and think about going in tomorrow…maybe.

Yesterday, I had the bright idea of washing a comforter at the local laundromat.  As I walked out my back door with the comforter bundled in my arms, I stepped off of the bottom step of our porch and landed on the edge of our sidewalk.  Of course, my right ankle rolled and I landed really hard on my left knee.  I’m not sure why I can’t just be graceful all of the time.  It hurt so bad, though, that I didn’t even look around to see if anyone was watching like I normally do.  I had no pride in that moment.  I laid down on the comforter and waited for the black spots to pass.  It took a while.  Fortunately, it wasn’t raining at that point.  I limped into the house and landed on our couch and laid there for the next while trying to figure out what to do.  My cousin, Lisa, called her husband who works at the Dr.’s office to see if I could take anything stronger than Tylenol.  The Dr. said that I couldn’t take Ibuprofen because I’m 22 weeks along so I either had to stick to Tylenol or go in to receive a prescription for Vicodin.  I thought that was interesting…either Tylenol or Vicodin.  I decided to suck it up and take Tylenol.  Anyway, I’m sure I’ll recover at some point, but life is hard when you have a rolled ankle and the pain tolerance of a little girl.

In other news, Jon was approached by a local school principal yesterday at his church softball game.  There is an opening for a school counseling position and he wondered if I’d be interested in applying.  I think I’ll probably go ahead and apply, but if I am offered the position, we’ll have some serious thinking and praying to do.  I highly doubt that the school would offer a part time option and with a baby coming in November, I’m not sure I want to commit myself to a full time job.  If anyone has any extra room on their prayer list, feel free to add that.  I would love to get into the world of school counseling, but I don’t know if the timing is quite right.  But, I guess I shouldn’t be too confident that I’ll be offered the job.  It could be that they won’t like my outfit when I interview.

We bought a new grill last week.  We still had some gift cards for Lowe’s, so we decided to put them toward a new grill.  We ended up only having to pay about $9.  We have used it once and we were very pleased with the results.  We will have plenty more opportunities to try it out this summer, I’m sure.

Our good friend, Matt Hunsberger, is coming to our house on Thursday on his way to a family reunion.  We are really looking forward to having him here.  Then on Friday and Saturday, several Leichty’s from Indiana will be making there way through our town.  It’ll be a busy weekend, but it will be fun to catch up with everyone, grill some good food, and watch some fireworks.  I love summer holidays.

Well, we made it back from NYC on Tuesday afternoon.  We had a great time touring the city (we never left Manhatten) and being with my siblings and their spouses.  We laughed a lot, ate too much and walked about 700 miles every day.  The weather was decent even though it rained for at least a little while every day we were there.  It was our goal to eat as much as possible in the city and I think we did pretty well tackling that task.  Thankfully we walked a lot, so we didn’t have to worry about all of the calories we consumed.  Feel free to check out our pictures here.

Jon went back to work right away on Wednesday and I spent the day doing laundry and getting settled back in.  The rest of the week went by quickly and our weekend was restful and relaxing.  Jon mowed the lawn, trimmed our shrubs, got his parents’ internet working, tilled the garden and is now sitting in front of the TV watching the Cubs.  He’s enjoying having a yard to take care of he’s doing a nice job of keeping up with everything.  I’ve enjoyed letting him take care of the yard because it took me a good 2 days to recover from my lawn mowing escapade last week.

On Thursday, I sent in all of my counseling paperwork.  It will be reviewed by the Ohio Counseling Board in July and then they’ll tell me whether or not I can take the counseling exam.  I’ve also had a couple of very promising conversations with a counseling agency near here. It sounds like there may be some hope for me finding a job with them even before I take the exam.  I may be able to do some case management or something similar until I have the proper credentials needed to practice counseling.  I’m going to make some phone calls tomorrow to see what my options are.  It’s encouraging to know that there are options.  I’ll keep you posted.

I would just like to announce to the blog world that I just mowed lawn all by myself for the first time in all of my almost-29 years.  When I was growing up, my dad or my brother would always mow our lawn, so I would just sit on my dad’s lap on the riding mower or I’d watch him from the porch if I couldn’t ride along.  I knew that neat, straight rows were imperative, so I was content to let them do it in case I couldn’t do it right.

When I moved away from home, I always lived in dorms or apartments where mowing the lawn was not necessary and now I’m married to a man who really enjoys doing yardwork.  All that to say, I never really needed to learn how to mow.  Until now.

We’re leaving for NYC tomorrow morning and we won’t be back until Tuesday, so the mowing needed to happen today.   As Jon left for work this morning at 7:30, he casually said, “Feel free to mow the lawn if you’d like…it might be raining by the time I get home.”   I laughed at him with a snort and said, “Yeah, but if I do it, it won’t be straight and then you might get frustrated.”  To my surprise, he said, “It doesn’t really matter what it looks like.”  WHAT?!

I went to the grocery store this morning and saw my cousin, Lisa.  I told her I was considering mowing the lawn and she encouraged me to do it.  She told me how much she enjoys mowing, so I was inspired to give it a shot.  Jon showed me how to start the push mower a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I could probably try it again.

Sure enough, to my delight, the mower started on my first try.  I felt pretty proud of myself.  It’s a nice mower — a gift from Jon’s Uncle Gerald.   Apparently, it’s self-propelled and in mint condition.  They all look the same to me.  Anyway, I started my rows and I made them nice and straight.  I missed a couple of streaks here and there, but I always went back to correct the error.  It was hard work — self-propelled, my hind leg!  I was sweating by the third row and my arms and legs were getting sore.  I thought to myself, “Wow — I’d really hate to see what a non-self-propelled mower is like!”

I was almost done with the whole yard, but I had some questions about some roots that needed to be mowed over.  I wasn’t sure if they would hurt the mower or not, so I went to get my Uncle Arlis.  He came over, assessed the situation and told me I’d be okay to mow over them.  Then he noticed the mower.  “Hey — this is a great mower, self-propelled, great condition…”

“Yeah right,” I replied.  “That thing pushes hard!”

He started the mower, pushed it a little and then he flipped a lever that I hadn’t noticed until that moment.  All of a sudden, the front wheels started spinning and Arlis pushed the mower with his finger.  It was then that it dawned on me that you had to actually turn the self-propel part on.  Do you know how much easier that whole process would have been had I known that ahead of time?  I’m still disgusted.  Arlis looked at me, laughing, and said, “Can I please tell this story?”  I think he’s probably still laughing at me…

Today is Tuesday and about an hour ago, Jon got home from his second day at work.  So far, it’s going pretty well.  In his words, “I haven’t met a single bad person yet!”  I guess that’s a good sign.  He was able to complete a work order for someone today and he knew what he was doing, which is also a very good sign.  It sounds like he’s really going to enjoy the people he’s working with and the environment overall is very positive.  Perhaps the “real world” won’t be as bad as people were telling us it would be.

I, on the other hand, stayed home all day.  I canned some strawberry-rhubarb jam, made a strawberry-rhubarb tart (with my new tart pan!!), made supper, cleaned the kitchen 12 times, and worked on my letter to the Ohio Counseling Board pleading that they allow me to take the counseling exam so I can work outside of my kitchen.  I’ll send that tomorrow and hope for the best.

We bought a new vehicle!  It is a 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe.  It was hard for me, the Michigander, to purchase a foreign vehicle, but I got over it as soon as we drove it around.  It has 25,000 miles on it and runs smoothly and quietly.  We’re pretty excited about it.  Jon was a little concerned yesterday because there were some oil stains in our garage.  However, he drove it up on some ramps and discovered that the oil plug isn’t sealing properly.  Apparently, it’s a 50 cent part, so he was able to relax after that discovery.  Of course, he almost had a heart attack 15 minutes earlier when he drove the Santa Fe up the ramps the first time and went a little too far, causing a loud screech as the ramps slid behind the tires instead of underneath the tires.  All I know is that I’m glad I didn’t see it happening because I am simply too faint of heart for that kind of ruckus.  Fortunately, the Santa Fe escaped without a scratch.

I’ve been feeling the baby move lately, which has added a whole new dimension to our excitement.  Jon even felt it move, so now he really believes me when I say that I’m pregnant.  It’s the strangest feeling, but one that I won’t get tired of any time soon.

On Saturday, Jon and I are going to NYC with my siblings and their spouses.  We’re really excited to see the big city and eat at Mesa Grill, Bobby Flay’s restaurant.  For those who know me well, I’m a HUGE Food Network fan, so eating at Bobby Flay’s restaurant will be really exciting for me.  It’s basically just a fancy steakhouse, so Jon should find it exciting, too.  I’ll let you know how the trip goes…

P.S. There are some new pictures of the house here.