This past month has been pretty stressful. My blog isn’t meant to be like a journal or my diary, but I’ve found that I tend to air out my laundry on here maybe a bit to often for some people, and may not often enough for others. When it comes down to it, I want my readers to be able to relate to me. I want them to know that I’m not just a drone behind a computer, coming in hot with a camera in their faces. I’m a human, and just like everyone else I have my own problems, and issues, and real life things.

Bringing this baby into this world rocked MY world. I love him more than I could have ever imagined, but that also leaves me feeling bad for my daughter. I know that I haven’t been giving her the attention that she needs. She’s been acting out a ton, and there’s way too many days that I’ve lost my cool with her. She keeps telling me “mom, don’t be mad,” and I feel like lately, that’s because I’m mad at her more often than not. She almost four and doesn’t listen to a dang thing I say. She’s not afraid of me, and the only thing that I can threaten her with is taking away the iPad I let her watch. It’s sad, and there’s days that I feel so defeated. Being a mom to a new baby is hard, but these last few weeks have shown me that being a mom to an almost-4 year old is harder…especially when you add that said baby into the mix. The other day, I just sat on the couch. I let Raylee play on the iPad a good majority of the day and I was just sad. I felt depressed. That was the first REAL stint of postpartum depression that I felt and it really sucks. Sleep deprivation, along with an unruly child, a baby that just seems to want to nurse, and just life took a toll on me hard that day. Most days are better than that luckily though….

Speaking of life, ours has kind of been rocked lately besides the addition to this baby.

My husband’s family has been farming since forever. They came to this area (central Washington) when they opened up irrigation here, and they have farmed it ever since. They were here when there weren’t roads, and it was just a huge dust bowl. The farm has been passed down from my husband’s grandpa, to his dad, and it was looking like Justin was going to start figuring things out like how to run it himself. There were quite a few things that led to farming seasons in the years past that made things hard for us. We kept losing ground to orchards in the area who would snatch up ground faster than people could blink. They were willing to pay top dollar, and these poor farmers can’t compete with that. There was the huge issue at the port in Seattle that managed to hit us pretty hard. A lot of the hay that we grow gets sold internationally, and if the ports aren’t open, things don’t go where they should, and prices fall. And fall hard.

With the price of everything going up, and the price we can sell crops going down, the money just doesn’t add up. Year after year, you have to take out loans just to operate, and HOPE that you come out even, and MAYBE you’ll be able to pay off that loan. If not, then next year you take out a bigger loan to help pay off that first one AND operate your farm. It goes on year after year. If you’re lucky, you don’t become a victim of bankruptcy, but there have been many in our area who aren’t so lucky.  Long story short, our farm was suffering. We lost precious ground, with means profit loss, and things haven’t been looking good. Due to finances, we had to lease out the ground. That left Justin jobless, basically. With no farm, he has no job.

Needless to say, this postpartum, sleep deprived momma has been STRESSED. I didn’t think I could be any more stressed with the addition of this new little human, and then all of this hit me like a ton of bricks.

At this point, Justin has a temporary job working for another farmer/friend, and the future is still kind of up in the air. We’re hoping to end up leasing the ground to those top-dollar paying orchards, and Justin possibly going back to school to do the Tree-Fruit Program in Wenatchee. We still don’t know if that’s the best option, and Justin doesn’t know if that’s what he even wants to do. Everything is just so unknown, and I HATE IT. I know things will work out, and I know things could be worse in our lives, but for the time being, it really does suck.

So for now, send prayers our way. We’ll make it out of this together, and everything will work out the way it should. Also, if you see in me around and I look like a hot mess, it’s because I am.