The Leichty Life

Here are a couple of videos that we find amusing.  The first one is a video demonstrating why our son gets stressed out whenever we get together with the Leichty family.  Here he is facing off with his cousin, Brady, who is 6 months older than Conner.  Brady won.

This video demonstrates the equal playfulness and maturity levels between my 28 year old husband and my 8 month old son as Jon tries to teach Conner new tricks…

I weeded our garden today. I’m definitely going to be sore tomorrow from all of the squatting - I never work that hard. I will say, however, that it was very rewarding work. You can actually see the brown soil now - it’s not covered in hideous greenery. Everything is growing really well and we should have cucumbers by the end of the week.

Conner is crawling around the house like a puppy these days. He just discovered recently that he can actually leave the carpet in the living room and venture into the world of hard wood floors in the rest of our house and that has certainly opened up a whole new world to him. And it’s made a lot of work for me. I will often hear crashes as he pulls various things off of shelves, tables, etc. And I thought I had baby-proofed our house! Today I heard a crash, walked into the living room and found a smiling Conner surrounded by Jon’s DVDs. I haven’t told Jon about that yet. But, I did get a picture. It’s got to be confusing when I tell Conner “NO!” and then run to get the camera.

We’ve been helping Jon’s parents move into their new house. It’s actually been kind of fun to help them sort through where everything should go. The most entertaining though, is when Jon and his brother take charge and start doing things while their mom runs behind them telling them to stop. And of course, they don’t listen. Disrespectful? Perhaps, but also very entertaining. Even Grace ends up laughing…eventually.

Jon got Conner to say “Da-da-da-da-da” last evening. He was thrilled. I’m hoping that Conner will start waking up in the middle of the night saying “da-da-da-da”. That means that Jon will have to go help him out. We’ve started letting Conner “cry it out” during the night — this is not a very fun phase. We tried it for the first time a week and a half ago. His loud cries lasted about 45 minutes. I finally turned on my light and started reading my book while Jon grabbed his pillow and headed to the guest room. The next night it only lasted 8 minutes and lately I’ve been falling back asleep so I’m not really sure how long his crying lasts. But, he still greets me with a smile in the morning, so it must not be that bad. And when he smiles at me like that, it’s kind of hard to stay mad about a sleepless night.

On Tuesday afternoon, I decided to go outside and enjoy some peace and quiet on my porch swing with a good magazine and a glass of mint tea. Soon after I began swinging, a man across and down the street from us started to cut down a tree in his front yard. The noise didn’t bother me - it was kind of fun to see the tree coming down branch by branch. I was actually pleased that he was doing it because it might actually cut down on the amount of birds that take up residence on our street.

No, what really bothered me was another neighbor of ours - a woman who lives a few houses down on our side of the street and across the street from the gentleman cutting down his tree. She was watering her flowers in her front yard wearing nothing but a bikini. At the risk of sounding like a judgmental prude, I don’t think bikinis should be worn anywhere (please know that I see a difference between a two-piece, modest tankini, which I’m okay with, and a skimpy bikini), let alone in your front yard while watering flowers when there are married men within view. I was so frustrated by her lack of respect, but instead of confronting her on the issue, I decided to talk about her on my blog. I have a husband and a growing son and the last thing I want around my house is a woman wearing a skimpy bikini while doing yard work. I’m all for people exercising their right to do whatever they want on their own property, but when you live in town and you are surrounded by neighbors, I would ask that you exercise respect by exercising your right to do whatever you want INSIDE your house.

And that, my three dear readers, is why I’m never going to let Conner leave the house without me there to shield his eyes. His high school friends will understand, right?

Well, I wrote every day for a few days and then took 12 days off. Here’s a little of what happened while I wasn’t writing…

Memorial Day Weekend:
The weather was beautiful and Jon and I were around all weekend. We enjoyed a hot dog roast with Jon’s family, a cook-out with our neighbors, and lots and lots of sun. Intense sun. The kind of sun that left me kicking my white self for not wearing any sunscreen. Stupid.

Tuesday:
I decided to look for cooking inspiration in my Simply in Season cookbook. I purchased lots of delicious fresh vegetables at the grocery store that morning and wanted to use them in new and exciting ways. I made Lemon-Asparagus Pasta. I added grilled chicken and blue cheese to make it even more interesting. Jon really liked it and I was reminded again of how much I love that he is an adventurous eater - he’s not just a meat and potatoes man and for that, I am thankful.

Wednesday:
I learned that my final project for my class (which I hate, in case anyone had forgotten), was due a week earlier than I thought. The due date in the syllabus said “week of June 1″, but in another part of the syllabus (which I didn’t read carefully until that morning), it said “Due date May 25-May 29.” I decided to email the professor and ask her when the due date was officially. She responded with this line only: “It is due about now.”

About now? What does that mean? After a brief moment of panic and disbelief, I called her. The conversation went a little like this:

“This is Dr. Smith.”

“Hi, Dr. Smith. This is Kim Leichty - I’m a student in your CLL 951 online course.”

“Mm-hmm”

“I have been working on my final project…”

(okay, not entirely true, but I had been thinking about it…)

“and I am just wanting to clarify the due date. I thought in the syllabus it said the project is due the week of June 1, but your email stated that it’s due ‘about now’. When is the last day it can be turned in?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what the syllabus says.”

Read that again…that’s really what she said.

She then realized that she was thinking about her 952 class instead of the 951 class, which I am in. So the conversation went on for another frustrating two minutes. The final word was that I needed to turn it in as soon as possible, but she’d accept it as late as June 4.

Thursday
Worked on my final project

Friday
Worked on my final project until 3:00 p.m. when I finally put it in the mail. The professor seems far too disorganized for me to trust her word on the June 4 date. Oh, the despair and the agony of student-hood.

Saturday
Jon hung up my porch swing! I am so happy about that. I sit on it very carefully just in case it can’t support all of my weight all at once, but so far I haven’t fallen. We then went out to Jon’s parents’ new house to look at the progress - everything looks great. They are on track to move in some time in July. On our way home, we decided we were hungry for some steak, so we stopped at the grocery store on the way home. We enjoyed a nice steak dinner (I was standing with Conner because he cried whenever we put him down…made the dinner a little less nice…) and then spent the evening with our next door neighbors shooting the breeze and making s’mores.

Sunday
We led music at our church, came home to make ice cream for the church’s ice cream social that evening, took an hour long nap and then headed to the church to churn both chocolate and strawberry ice cream. Yum.

Today
Jon headed back to work with leftover steak in his lunch box. Conner and I spent much of the morning playing and learning to crawl. He is so close to crawling on his own, but every time he moves his knee forward, he ends up doing a belly-flop. Very frustrating for him…and apparently, exhausting. I was washing dishes after lunch and noticed that he had gotten awfully quiet while playing in the living room. I walked in and found him laying on his tummy in the middle of all of his toys, sound asleep. I took him to his crib, then came back downstairs to work on my very last assignment for class (yes, an assignment that is due AFTER my final project. Strange, I know).

I. Hate. Homework. It’s 76 degrees outside, not a cloud in the sky, my son is taking a nap, and I’m sitting at the desk (beautiful though it may be) and doing homework (well, I was until I decided to write this post). There is definitely something wrong with this picture…especially considering that I have already completed a 63-credit MA in counseling. Enough said about that.

Jon had church league golf last night. Sounds like he had a rough time with it. He came home saying “there is much room for improvement.” I’m not entirely sure what that means in terms of his score, but he had a good time anyway. Conner and I stayed home and played with his toys while watching American Idol. I actually voted last night — I always vote one time each season and last night was my night. I’m sorry if this is offensive to anyone, but I really don’t want Adam to win. There’s something about his tongue that freaks me out — he always has it sticking out when he sings. It’s one thing if you’re the lead singer of KISS…but he’s not. And any guy who wears eyeliner on a regular basis should not be anyone’s idol. In case you’re wondering, I voted for the other guy, Kris. I like his voice and he’s never stuck his tongue out at me.

Back to my paper…

It’s another gorgeous day — it’s hard to feel grumpy on a day like this even though I woke up with a headache strong enough to make me want to crawl back into bed. I’m hoping to take Conner on a walk this afternoon and maybe that will help.

Jon had his church softball game last night. Conner was so fussy and he’d wail every time I cheered for the team. He’s a wimp. The game was going pretty well until the last inning when one of the guys pulled his hamstring, fell to the ground and hurt his shoulder. It’s one of the older guys on the team (54 years old) and the fall caused him to have trouble breathing. Someone called the squad so he could be checked out. It was hard to watch him struggle, especially knowing that this would probably end his church softball career. It’s always difficult for me to see people realize their own age - probably because I’m afraid of losing my own youth. I think aging stinks even though the more mature ones in our world would say everything gets better with age. Is that true or is that just a way of making ourselves feel better about aging? It’s probably true that you’re only as old as you feel, but that’s scary considering that some days I feel like I’m 80. Not sure what that says about my future.

I planted flowers in our flower box yesterday. Now our front porch looks almost perfect — all it needs is the porch swing that has been sitting in our garage for over a year. I keep begging Jon to hang it up, but I think he’s a little nervous that the roof of our porch won’t be able to support it. We had a bad porch swing experience once in Virginia at a home we were house sitting. I was all excited to swing on their porch swing and Jon was willing to sit out there with me. We sat down, went back and forth maybe twice, and then the swing pulled out of the roof on one side and we both went crashing to the floor. Not one of our more graceful moments. So, I think Jon is hesitant to hang it just in case we have a repeat performance on the stage of our own porch.

In other news, we got a new desk from my Uncle Lyle’s company in Michigan. We love it - it fits perfectly in our piano room. It could almost get me excited about doing the homework for my stupid class…almost.