The New Normal

"Excuse me." I say in the hallway as we brush elbows trying to get past the other.

"Sorry," he grumbles as he escapes into our bedroom to shower and get dressed.

I'm off to ready the kids for school, grabbing this and that and asking Lia to get me a hair tie so I can put braids in their hair for the second - no, third day of school.

This is the new normal.

The new crazy.

Lucia is whining in the background because she wants food and she has been up for 2.5 hours and it's only 7:30. I ignore her and button up jeans and move heads in the correct direction while I twist and tie and tightly do up a french braid in the older girls' hair.

This is the new crazy.

Mike comes back down the hallway, and I hurry off of my phone where I was glancing at Facebook to start folding laundry like I had been doing that all along. Like I haven't stopped since I woke up. Because who's allowed to stop, when you're the mom? And it's something to rub in his face if he says that I'm not doing anything. I'm always doing something.Besides when I'm checking Facebook, of course. Damn Facebook. I hate you.

He finishes packing up lunch, putting the ice packs from the freezer into the lunch boxes. I glance in the lunch boxes and see that there aren't any veggies. I always like to give the girls a veggie with their lunches, even if they don't eat them.

"Oh, you didn't grab any carrots. I'll go get some." I say.

"Right, because I do nothing right," he retorts.

"I didn't say that. I like to give them a veggie with their lunches. So I will grab some carrots."

He huffs away.

The new normal.

I go back to folding the laundry because I can't go on Facebook now. I go back to looking busy busy busy. Mostly so I don't have to talk. Mostly so we don't have to fight.

This is the new crazy. Keeping busy, no talking which means no fighting.

I hate this part of the ebb and flow. The part where we aren't on the same playing field. Where he's in a different chapter on a different page than I. Where we don't know how to communicate without biting the other one's head off for saying the smallest thing.

I hate this part of the circular motion of a relationship.

I like the part of the circle where we are working together, we're a team, we're on the same page, we're communicating well and there is laughter and joy and the girls can taste the goodness in their home.

But these parts? These new normals? These new crazies? They'll take getting used to, I suppose.

The brushes in the hallway can turn into sweet kisses that no one sees but us. The jabs to each other's lack of responsibility will turn into affirmations for doing even the smallest of things. The resentments can turn into gratitude.

It's all in perspective, I suppose.

But this new normal? Of school craziness, of packing lunches and getting dressed and doing hair and brushing teeth and whiny babies? This can become an organized chaos, if we just give it time.

Right? 

Veterans, shoot me straight. Does the before-school craziness become better, with time? Do your husband and you know your roles so well that you fall into them like you've been doing it all along? Does the new crazy ever become the new organized chaos?

Do you share special moments in the hallway instead of avoiding the others' eyes all in the name of getting things done?

Tell me the truth, when do we find the same page? When does the circle come back around? When do the ebbs and flows move in our favor?

I don't know about this newness. It's hard on me, hard on Mike, hard on the kids. But I know it's time. I know we will get past the rocky beginnings and make it to the plains.

I just want the smoothness of the field to hold me now.