A Few Reasons Our Backs Are Hurting

Both Chris and I are having some struggles with our backs aching.  There are a few reasons for this...one is Samantha, two is Josh (more on this later), and three is shoveling a lot of dirt, gravel, and moving patio pavers. 

We worked on prepping the patio area this weekend.  We ended up having to add a lot of soil to the upper level and some more base gravel to the bottom level.  This activity alone will take up many more hours through the next week and weekend. 

We were able to move about 300+ patio pavers to the backyard as well.  This was some back breaking labor with all the bending and reaching.  The good news is that we moved about 1/4 pallet; the bad news is that we have about 5 full pallets left to move. In the end, however, we will end up with a fantastic patio and it will add value to the house.

The reason Josh is making our backs ache is that we have an enormous baby on our hands!  I took Josh to his one month appointment and he decided to start his own curve.  He was 23 3/4 inches and 14 lb 6 oz.  This puts him around the size of an average 4 month old...I really need to lay off the candy!

 

In other kid news, Samantha was accidentally bit by Tucker.  I left the room to finish getting lunch ready and Samantha decided to take that time to put all Tucker's toys on top of him.  He snapped at her and unfortunately made contact near her eye.  Besides some tears and a couple scrapes she is fine.  Hopefully she learned a lot more from this incident than from us repeatedly telling her to stop touching the dog (since that obviously hasn't worked). 

I think Samantha is really going to enjoy when Josh gets a little bigger.  Although with him being immobile, she has taken advantage of having a willing(?) participant in her play.  I think his blood pressure may be a little high due to the stress...

And in true toddler fashion, Samantha enjoys playing with her food.  Check out her nice zucchini mustache.

And speaking of zucchini, our garden is looking very good - we need some more straw but now our seeds are sprouting for the beans and soon for the squash.  The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are all doing well.  Hopefully this year we can keep on top of the weeds (an ounce of prevention...).

This coming week we will have some help and will hopefully make some good patio progress!