I’m back! As my regular readers might have learned (or guessed), our baby girl arrived at the beginning of July—on the 4th of July to be exact. Yes, our little firecracker is one of the five-percent of babies born on their actual due dates. She either decided to humor us in our amusement about potentially having an expat baby in France on Independence Day in the U.S.A.—or she likes to be on time.

The past seven weeks have been wonderful, exhausting, exhilarating and full of the unexpected. I’ll write a separate post with my delivery story. However, starting from the moment I went into labor just hours after a dinner date with my husband at a local Indian restaurant (I only half believed the spicy food would kick-start anything more than my heartburn), we’ve truly learned the only thing we can completely plan on with a baby is for our plans to constantly change. Good thing we’ve been in training over the past year and a half through the unpredictability of Matt’s job.

One of my biggest lessons so far? I love being a mom. I always thought I’d enjoy motherhood, but I never imagined just how much I would adore this job more than any I’ve had in my life. Seeing my husband as a daddy is amazing. It’s made me fall even more in love with him to see how wonderful he is with our daughter and how much he adores her.

Admittedly, parenthood is not always easy. There were definitely times during the first month where I cried, felt helpless and spent more time in bed than I thought possible for someone not recovering from an illness, but my baby has thrived (she’s already up almost four pounds since birth) and my husband and I are once again getting time to connect after baby girl has gone to bed. I’m getting dressed (most days) and eating (many) meals at a table instead of in bed. I even survived four days of taking care of our five-week-old alone when Matt was sent on a last-minute trip to Mexico. Actually, I’d have to say I thrived—after all, I managed to shower each of those days (even if we did spend a lot of time in our PJs).

One of the other things I’ve learned? It’s okay if you get to the end of the day and the only things you’ve accomplished are feeding, snuggling and changing your baby. The dishes can wait. The laundry can pile up. You can always send that email tomorrow. Your baby is growing and changing so fast that you’ll miss those tiny, perfect toes and fingers and the innocent joy of his or her first smiles if you don’t take the time to observe and soak it all in.

So now, just as we’ve started hitting our stride here balancing our new family life with Matt’s job and my writing, things are about to change again. Next week we move to Monterrey, Mexico! Not only will we be adjusting to a new country with a two-month-old, we’ll also be tackling an intimidating 19-hour travel day with our infant to get there.

So, stay tuned. Our family adventure is just getting started!