New Year's Eve, regardless of how you spend it, can’t help but be an anticipatory night. If you’re a big reveler, this is your night to paint the town in Technicolor hues. If you thrill to the sight of objects dropping from on high to usher in the new year, Raleigh’s got your acorn and television’s got Times Square. Even if you don’t do anything out of the ordinary to mark Dec. 31, it’s hard to stifle a small smile upon awaking the next morning to realize a whole new year awaits, spread before you in 365 hopeful increments.

For the past six years, New Year’s Eve has been particularly poignant, for it’s the night I officially joined the motherhood brotherhood.

My husband and I brought our first child home from the hospital on New Year’s Eve 2002. At Rex Hospital, where I delivered, it’s policy to put mom in a wheelchair and baby in her arms and wheel both to the front entrance of the birth center. I told them I could walk just fine, didn’t need a wheelchair, but they insisted. In retrospect, I understand. It was a moment of forced relaxation before life with baby began.

With the act of bundling two-day-old Aviv into his blue and yellow-checked Snugride, clicking that carseat into its base, and slamming shut the doors of our Nissan Altima, we were beginning a journey in more ways than one.

When we reached home five minutes later, we stepped over that day’s copy of The News & Observer. We could read the headline on one of the stories: “Coming Home.”

Since then, New Year’s Eve has become even more of a time to take stock of where I am in my life. New Year’s resolutions are common, of course, but for the past six years, mine have ventured beyond pledges like “go to the gym (at least) three times a week” and “stop biting my nails” (neither of which I can seem to manage).

For me, New Year’s Eve is an opportunity to assess my parenting skills, or lack thereof, to think about what I’ve done wrong (yell too much) and what I need to do better (be more patient). Fortunately, my kids are all too willing to give me another chance, lots of other chances, every day.

Last year, I took a class at Project Enlightenment, a Wake County public school system program that offers early childhood education classes for parents of kids from birth through kindergarten.

One of the instructors offered up an analogy I take solace in frequently.

Parenting, she said, is like a merry-go-round.

There are times when you do things you’re not proud of and you have to get off the carousel. But kids are forgiving; they’re always willing to let you get back on.

The message? Don’t be so hard on yourself. Mistakes are going to happen.

Parenting is a process with a steep, even insurmountable, learning curve and no one right way to go about it.

I’m a closet People magazine fan and I, like millions of other Americans, couldn’t stay away from the August cover featuring Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their new twins.

I’m a sucker for celebrity babes, but what really stayed with me was a quote from Jolie. Being the cynic I am, I couldn’t believe I was getting inspiration from Jolie. But there it was, a sentiment that was hard to ignore and one which I consciously try to implement each day.

"My mom loved being a mom and made sure her children knew every day how much joy we brought to her,” Jolie told People. “I hope to give that to my kids."

When New Year’s Eve 2009 arrives, that’s one resolution I intend to have fulfilled.

Bonnie appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.