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For the past three years, our New Year's Eves have been beyond lame. From doing absolutely nothing to trekking our children to a party on the other end of the city, only to spend all night rocking the baby to sleep in the dark next to a pile of coats.

But Tuesday night, Mike and I had our first fun New Year's Eve since we had kids. 

We went to the same party we've gone to for the past two years— it's a small party attended by all parents who bring their kids, mostly the same ages. We all go with the expectation that it will be a total shitshow, but at least we'll be in it together.

This year, about twenty minutes into the party, as we all lounged in the living room drinking and chit-chatting while stuffing ourselves with various cheeses, we realized we had the perfect aged kids (a one-year-old/four-year-old sibling split) to bring to a party while still being able to enjoy ourselves.

I'll tell you why.

When Harlow was a newborn, I did not have the sleeping thing mastered. I had to rock and feed her as long as it took her to fall asleep. If I left the room and she started crying, I had to go back in. When Mazzy was a toddler, she could not play with similarly aged children on her own without a lot of crying, sharing issues and injuries (real or imagined) involved.

At last year's party, when we weren't rocking crying babies in a futile attempt to get them all to fall asleep together in one room, we were policing the toddlers. 

But THIS YEAR, the babies were all sleep trained and went easily down in their pack and plays. When one woke to cry a bit, we knew that if we left the situation alone, it would fix itself. Usually all was quiet within five to ten seconds.

The four-year-olds were perfectly content to play with the other kids at the party. You can stick a bunch of preschoolers in a room, turn on Finding Nemo and not hear a peep from them for the next two hours while the adults relax on the couch with a glass of bubbly.

It is a miraculous thing.

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At 9:30pm, we set the kids up with party hats and blowers and dance music and had a grand old time pretending it was New Year's Eve since we assumed the kids would soon pass out. Instead, they all made it to midnight and partied again with the grown-ups for real.

But I don't want to just talk about my awesome New Year's Eve. I want to talk about what made this entire year awesome. On Wednesday, I gave you my top ten posts of 2013. Today, I'd like to pay tribute to some of the other stuff that happened this year.

The crazy stuff that I still can't quite wrap my head around. Like being nominated for Best Blog and Best Instagram in Parents Magazine. (See how I snuck that in there? Please vote for me in both categories once a day until January 13th! I'm currently in second.)

This was the year that Baby Mugging made it all the way from Jimmy Kimmel to Jeopardy.

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Epic Baby Hair became a scandal in the Daily Mail and then found it's way onto NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me."

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My toddler facebook newsfeed made it onto George Takei's facebook page. Of course, some jackass stole it and replaced my watermark with her own, but my true fans knew where it came from.

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The Evil Baby Glare-Off got so many submissions, it broke my facebook album.

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And I had freakin' Julianne Moore in my living room, Jim Gaffigan doing crafts at my dining room table and Taye Diggs disrobing in my bathroom.

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I've still got four more episodes of "The Mommy Show" left to air, by the way.

But enough of the me, me, me stuff. Here's a look back at some of the kids who really made my year. And no, I'm not talking about Mazzy and Harlow. Although they were big parts of my year too.

I'm talking about Sydney, the baby with the amazing backstory, who made a deal with Satan to win the Evil Baby Glare-Off:

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Sophia aka "Annette Funicello" who DID NOT WEAR A WIG to win the "Epic Baby Hair" contest:

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Ilona and her beautiful daughter Amelie who inspired my entire Monday Morning series:

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Kadence aka "The House Destroyer" who killed it in the Method Power Pose-Off:

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Little known fact: Kadence was also the winner of the Evil Baby Glare-Off in 2012:

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Atlas, who revived my Baby Celebrity Lookalikes by looking exactly like Cam from Modern Family:

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Holden, who breathed fresh holiday spirit into Baby Mugging at the end of the year:

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And lastly, the kids from KISS, one of the winners of my Halloween Costume Awards who actually used this photo for their holiday card this year:

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I love you all. Thank you for trusting me with photos of your kids.

To even bigger things in 2014!

xo, Mommy Shorts