We have been living in Brussels now for almost five months. Mr. Big Eyes has two teeth, and he grunts like The Cookie Monster when expressing appreciation or recognition of something. My husband and I still have all our teeth despite our daily intakes of Pierre Marcolini chocolate. Unlike Mr. Big Eyes, we don’t grunt anymore since, after much elbow and pommes frites grease, the number of boxes we have to unpack has dramatically diminished. In fact, they’re almost all gone. We have hung most of our pictures, and an echo ricochets off the walls of only two rooms. We’re still missing some light fixtures, and the fax machine may never work. But the few guests we’ve had tell us the house feels cozy, and looks as if we’ve lived here for years.

After a Christmas spent away from Brussels, I walked up the 51 steps of our maison de maitre, sighed as the sky overhead promised more grey intervals, and flopped on our bed to relax in front of the television with my team (my over-worked husband, my almost-toothless 7-month-old, and my soggy Labrador). “We’ve come a long way since August,” I said to my husband. He nodded, Mr. Big Eyes grunted, and our dog sighed. We sat up in bed, as if wearing back braces, in order to see the television perched on the stand just a few inches too short of our line of vision. When moving, many things seem to come up a little short.

Moving was harder than I thought. Sure, I’d done it before. Between boarding school and college, I had already moved 16 times by the time I was 21. Then, there was the post-college move to New York, and the three moves within Manhattan. Eventually, there was the move to Italy, then back to New York, and once more back to Italy, and, just to round things off, three moves within Rome. So, by the time I was packing for Brussels last summer, I was technically on my 27th move with a track record of about 10,000 miles of masking tape and 500 rolls of bubble wrap.

“Nessun problema,” I told friends in Italy. “There will be a moving company that does everything and I’ll just have to delegate.” But once the movers packed up my life in one country, and minimally unpacked it in another, the best reaction I could muster was a fit of sobs. I wished they could unpack the stress I felt of turning a house into a home, a tired husband into a happy companion, and a hungry newborn into a pudgy infant. All without help, and a husband in the office all week.

Today I went to an orientation class run by expatriates, even though I was five months late to it. I tend to avoid these things for fear that no one will ask me to join their play group or that I may not have much in common with The Mini-Van Mothers who crave peanut butter over Nutella. But I guess I’m turning into something of a Mini-Van Mamma myself (although my husband loves to point out that we drive a sports wagon not a station wagon). And it felt great to tune out during some of the lecture knowing I was already ahead of the game: I’ve heard of Skype and already have it set up. I know I’m supposed to weigh and sticker my fruits and vegetables before paying for them at the hyper-marche’. I know how to transform my DVD player so that it can play both American and European DVDs. And I can pronounce “poissonerie” so that the locals know I’m looking for salmon rather than poison.

But moving makes me extremely sensitive. Even though I’m long past being pregnant, I still feel my hormones are surfing tsunamis. Breastfeeding Mr. Big Eyes through his sixth month likely set my estrogen on edge. I am not proud of the temper tantrums I have thrown in front of my husband in public places. Or what he and I call “ce-n’est-pas-possible” moments of frustration when Belgian rhythms are too methodical and slow for our New Yorker and Italian tendencies to get the job done, fast and yesterday. Or when my high school French leaves me miffed for the word for “shredded,” and I leave the deli counter with Parmesan cheese in chunks rather than shavings.

My days are centered around Mr. Big Eyes’ needs and appetite. He’s deliciously more interactive than before and both his gut-giggling and two-tooth smile are priceless. Some days around dinnertime I toss him like a football into my husband’s arms, exhausted by the limericks and lullabys I crone all day in 13 hours of endless entertainment. But then there are others where I just don’t want to let go and can’t imagine how I’ll ever be able to. He saddles himself on my hip, and nuzzles my neck. Nothing feels sweeter.

So it’s easier now, this life in Brussels, and certainly much easier than all that friends of mine are experiencing in their new lives in Bejing, New Delhi, and Belgrade, for instance. Almost everyone speaks English here, and I can easily get by on broken French. Oddly, the Flemish don’t expect anyone to speak, or even learn, their language. I hope to learn how to say more than “to buy” and “to sell” in Flemish by the time I leave Belgium, as a courtesy to the country.

But it isn’t necessarily the difference of language that makes moving most difficult. It’s the clipping of roots, and the challenge of planting new ones and making them grow, albeit temporarily, in another garden, complete with buds, burrs, branches and berries.