It's not easy for the kids to be at the house right now because it is just a mass of boxes with almost no toys left out and little room to run around and play. And, today it was cold (ish) and wet outside, leaving us all cramped inside. While this was good in the sense that I had seven loads of laundry and a TON of work to do for school (not to mention the fact that we have very little time left to finish packing), it meant for fussy children and short fuses for the parents.
So, the surprise really is less that we had a pretty big fight and more that we didn't have it until around 6:00pm. The basic gist of the fight was that Barney blamed me for Olivia falling down some stairs and hitting her head (she's just fine), and I thought it was his fault. My fighting technique is to get hopping mad in the moment and then be totally over it within a few minutes. Barney is just the opposite. He stays calm in the moment but then holds a grudge for hours and hours. He has essentially refused to be in the same room with me or to talk to me since the fight. I am not mad anymore, and I am not panicked about the fight either (which is exactly how I would have felt at certain points in the marriage). While I still feel like it was not my fault that she fell, it doesn't seem worth the energy to fight about it. So, after the kids went to bed, I went into the room where Barney is hiding out and apologized, simply saying that I was sorry for lashing out at him and that my behavior was inappropriate. He did not respond, nor has he talked to me since.
Nevertheless, I think that things will be okay tomorrow, and I believe that my apology did help, even if I can't tell yet. Fighting seems to be a pretty inevitable part of marriage, and I feel good about this one in the sense that I handled it the best way I could afterwards, even if I did overreact just a bit in the heat of the moment. It's progress at least.
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