A New Normal

A few days after we returned from some of the craziness that was our traveling over Christmas, Darrell made the comment about looking forward to getting back to our "normal" routine. But then William got sick, and "normal" got delayed. And then I found out that I was going to be working for two weeks longer than I thought, delaying "normal" some more. Finally, a few days ago, Darrell had an epiphany: Even once William gets over his cold and FINALLY starts sleeping through the night again, and even once I'm done working, we will never return to the same "normal" we were at before Christmas. Because inevitably, Garrett will start teething (again). And he'll be walking in no time. And sooner or later we're going to have to bite the bullet and start getting serious about potty training William. There will never be a "normal"--at least not one that lasts for more than a week--for a long, long time. And while I was mulling over this concept, and slowly coming to terms with it, I had a realization of my own. The concept of "normal" has been what has made some of Garrett's infancy difficult for me. Even though things have, for the most part, gone more smoothly than they did with William, I still found myself getting unnecessarily stressed and frustrated at times--and I realize in hindsight that most of that stress was self-inflicted. I was stressing over getting our lives back into a "normal" routine--and in my head, the normal routine that I was aiming for was the one that we had before Garrett was born. Sure, I knew that having a second kid would be a huge change and adjustment, but I just assumed that after we settled in to life with two we would settle right back to where we had been. And since that definitely isn't the case, I'd been feeling like we were still unsettled, and feeling unsettled makes me feel stressed. But if I leave behind the notion of "normalcy" that we had pre-Garrett, and let myself focus on just the present, I realize that things actually are going really well. And, arguably, we've settled quite comfortably into life with two kids. There's still a few pieces out of place, and I'm not sure how they will fit into our life as a family of four (this blog being one of them), but I'm giving myself some time and grace to figure that stuff out.