By Matthew Eisley, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - The Triangle's first baby of 2008 is a brown-haired Raleigh infant named Jonathan Alvarez-Gutierrez.

He greeted the world at 12:18 a.m. today at WakeMed's Raleigh hospital, weighing seven pounds and nine ounces.

"Now that I know I have the first baby, I'm excited," his tired mother, Laura Gutierrez-Bernal, 32, said through a nurse interpreter. "I'm surprised, and very happy."

The boy's father, construction worker Valeriano Alvarez, 32, said he was proud of his son.

"This baby will bring me joy," he said through the interpreter.

The couple's daughter, Erandi Alvarez, a bilingual third-grader at Combs Elementary School, said she was looking forward to having a playmate.

"It's kind of exciting," she said, smiling big and cradling her baby brother adoringly in her left arm.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/wake/r ... 54936.html