The magnetar Swift J1822.3 - 1606 entered an outburst phase in 2011 July .
Previous X-ray studies of its post-outburst rotational evolution yielded inconsistent measurements of the spin-inferred magnetic field .
Here we present the timing behavior and flux relaxation from over two years of Swift , RXTE , and Chandra observations following the outburst .
We find that the ambiguity in previous timing solutions was due to enhanced spin down that resembles an exponential recovery following a glitch at the outburst onset .
After fitting out the effects of the recovery , we measure a long-term spin-down rate of \dot { \nu } = ( -3.0 \pm 0.3 ) \times 10 ^ { -8 } s ^ { -2 } which implies a dipolar magnetic field of 1.35 \times 10 ^ { 13 } G , lower than all previous estimates for this source .
We also consider the post-outburst flux evolution , and fit it with both empirical and crustal cooling models .
We discuss the flux relaxation in the context of both crustal cooling and magnetospheric relaxation models .