Baby's first...

...Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, celebration.

And it all was by accident.

The family and I went over to Grandma's house, then we joined her boyfriend for some dinner at Heaven Dragon in Arvada. (Its sister store in Thornton is the one President Bush orders from anytime Air Force One stops in the area. He's even honored with his own special on the menu. Lest you worry, it's not what C. and I ordered.)

We weren't expecting festivities bringing in the Year of the Rat, but while we munched on kung pao chicken, lemon chicken, a Happy Family combo, rice and egg rolls, a loud crackling of fireworks outside the front door caught our attention. Teen-age boys in dragon and lion costumes began snaking through the tables. Drum beats echoed through the dining room. Then a pair of young boys came through in their costume, stopping long enough at my side to pose for a photo. The boy in front was busy maneuvering the mouth, ears and eyes on his bright costume.

I heard crying, but knew it wasn't B. I looked over at him in his carseat, and he was sleeping soundly. The noise came from the table next to ours. A little blond-haired girl was crouched underneath by her mom's legs, plugging her ears. The tears left tiny wet tracks down her cheeks.

The fireworks didn't wake or startle B., but later some of the other commotion did. Either that or he just had to see what was going on.

I promise pictures later.

D'oh!

It finally happened. Up until now, B. had been going, at most, six hours between feeds. We tried to time those at night, of course, but they've been few and far between.

Well, last night he went a whopping eight hours between feeds (sleeping for seven of them)! And what was I doing?

I was wide awake, waiting it out. I fed him at 8 o'clock, he got sleepy around 9, so we decided to forgo his bath until he ate around 10 or 10:30 (that has been the trend, or so I thought). After he went to sleep, C. and I finished watching the rest of the Steelers-Jaguars game (sorry to all my peeps in PA!), ate hot dogs for a late-late dinner, and watched a Saturday Night Live rerun that had one of our favorite skits (promise to post that later).

When 11 o'clock rolled around, I started to get antsy. Should we B. to feed, burp and bathe him? Should we let him sleep? Only one problem with the latter: I was still awake. I would be missing out on valuable ZZZZs if this was his long sleep of the night.

We just said, "Screw it! Let him sleep!" and C. and I started playing Tiger Woods '05 on XBox. We played 18 holes at St. Andrews and I scored a 63 (woot!), all the while hearing little peeps out of B. on the baby monitor. He never full-on woke up, and I even joked to C. this is going to be the night he's going to sleep for eight hours.

At 1:30 a.m., when I needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open, I tiptoed into bed, trying not to make a sound. B. didn't rouse until 3:50 to feed, then again at 8:20 a.m.

I've had six hours of sleep, which is usually great in my book, but I'm lamenting the precious seven-hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep I missed out on. Hopefully this wasn't a freak occurrence and he'll do it again this week, then more and more until it's a nightly ritual.

Happy 2008

How did you ring in the new year? I guarantee you it wasn't as "wild" as mine.

After making plans of watching Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and sipping champagne while the ball dropped, I wound up sleeping next to B.'s Pack 'n' Play by 11:15 p.m., snoring loud enough that C. could hear me downstairs on the baby monitor. I woke up an hour later, frantic that I had missed the ball, the toast and the kiss.

I sipped a little wine anyway, had the kiss and fell asleep again, rousing about 3 a.m. when B. was ready to eat again.

So there you have it. The New Years Eve of a new parent.