Flux, flux, and more flux

My life has been in flux for quite some time now. Last March, we learned that we would be parents. We were so excited! A wonderful little baby blessing was the focus of our every day from then on. Prenatal visits, mixed nuts in the cupboard for my middle of the night feedings, ignoring TV shows to watch the baby kick the nut can off my belly from within, etc. We were consumed with baby preparations. It was the most exciting time of my life! During the initial phase of this baby stuff, my DH was finishing his thesis, racing the clock each night to make the May graduation deadlines. He did it! We were so ready to be finished with studenthood for a while. The growing, VERY active baby inside me was quite a nice chance of pace. An office move/job change reared its ugly head in June. That put me under a lot of unwanted physical and emotional stress. In the midst of these life changes, I was in the process of slowly losing my grandmother, who had been my confidante and supporter through everything. I had been dealing with the pending loss of her for a long time, but you can never be fully prepared to lose the person who understands you better than anyone else in the world. She passed away in early August, and I was as ready as I could have been. Fat pregnant and grieving, I just tried to focus on the baby-induced joys, both present and future. My sister was pregnant too. Her beautiful baby girl was born September 12, at which time DH and I entered a two month phase of baby school. We were delighted to have the advantage of a "practice baby." Plus we were doing the requisite childbirth classes on the side. As if enough hadn't happened in six months, finally on November 5th, 2003, we entered the world of parenthood! Then, we survived eight weeks of living by the 24-hour clock. Watching TV at 3am felt as normal as at 3pm. Eating a meal at 12am felt as normal (albeit annoying) as at 12pm. Before we were solidly out of that phase, I went back to work. That was perhaps the hardest thing about having a baby. Pushing her out might have been physically exhausting (though not really painful, oddly enough), but taking her to my mom every morning while I headed off to a job I loathed was a thousand times harder by far. The drama of the coming weeks inspired us to let me "retire" to stay-at-home motherhood sooner than expected. At last I was able to fulfill my dream of being a home mom! After several months, I have finally begun settling into that role. And in the middle of this transition, we have been preparing for another transition back to studenthood. My DH will be starting law school at University of Virginia (very proud of him!) in the fall. So, a cross-country move, requiring that I leave my whole family and my life-long hometown, will top off the long list of life's little transitions for this year. My goodness! I am looking forward to the adventures ahead, to becoming a truly independent family unit just the 3 of us, to experiencing more obvious seasons(!)...so many things. We are currently in the moving phase. Next comes the settling in phase, followed by a probable homesickness phase. And before we know it, we will finally stop one day and realize that life has, at long last, settled into a reliable pattern of daily activities again. By then, we will have done our fair share of time living in a state of flux and will probably be all the wiser for it.