bisone family

christmastime

I'm finally getting around to blogging about Christmas. It's so hard to get things done when you have a toddler who can stand and reach and who gets into everything.

We spent Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa's house with Paul, Lisa, Carl, Vaughn and Dave. We opened lots of presents and ate an especially good dinner. Get ready, I'm posting lots of pictures...

Elena, not quite sure what's happening

PRESENTS!

Dave showing Elena how to play her new drum

playing with her drumsticks

other things are way more fun than presents

Lisa got a new digital camera

Vaughn, intent on finding the password on his bat computer

Frank being good, I think

Jack, right in the middle of it all

me, looking at the knitting book that Dave got me

Nana opening a present she got for herself (it was from her trip to Africa)

Papa getting tickets to a concert

Dave with his gift from Africa

NINJAS!

Elena and her favorite guy

Lisa and Vaughn looking at a pop-up book (the book was a gift for Lisa, not Vaughn)

more present opening with Paul

Papa, squishing the life out of Elena

Chris, trying to steal Elena's toys

kids in jammies

Elena and daddy

On Christmas Day, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house to spend time with the Bisone's. We were treated to another wonderful Christmas dinner and Elena had a great time playing with all of her aunts. More picures...

peek a boo

playing with Jo

having fun with Anne

Elena, getting into the presents and trying to eat them

Grandma and Jo

the tree

Grandpa Geno

Anne and Ray

Denise and Hector

Jo and Grandpa Geno

Chris, such a geek

Ray

Grandma and Elena

the sock monkey!

Chris, Elena and Jo

The Saturday after Christmas, we went to Tom and Debbie's house for the annual Bass Christmas. We did a lot of talking and a lot more eating.

These are the youngest of the Bass's
Elena, Tyler, Sam and Isabella

minus Isabella

only the boys left

having fun with Nana

santa baby

I didn't want to post Elena's Christmas pictures until everyone got their cards in the mail. It would have ruined the fun of opening the card. Right? Make sure you have plenty of help when you attempt to take the picture of a one year old. It took four people about half an hour to get that picture. Dave was the one who kept putting the hat back on when Elena pulled it off, Chris held the backdrop behind her, Nana was the one who made her laugh, and I took the pictures. Frank was also there and helped with his own special distraction techniques. It was quite an ordeal, but it was worth it. I love the way the pictures turned out. Here are a couple more.

I knew Elena has been doing some teething with her molers coming through, but I just noticed that one of her eye teeth had also come through. I had no clue that she would be getting those already. So I did some further probing, which Elena just loves, and realized all four eye teeth have come through. Wow, no wonder she's been so crabby. Or at least I'm hoping I can blame her crabbiness on that. I hope that for now we can be done with the whole teething process and start sleeping throught the night again. She's only got four more teeth to get to her twenty tooth total and those are her two year molers. Although, considering all of her other teeth came in early, those probably will too. Probably at eighteen months or something. At least I have something to look forward to.

a year in pictures

Just a little video of some of my favorite pictures of Elena's first year.

Photo and video editing at onetruemedia.com

goldfish

Elena gets into everything now. She loves to open and close the cupboards and play with the things she finds. For the most part I don't mind. There's not much she can ruin and it keeps her busy, which isn't easy lately. This particular evening, she opened the pantry and started playing with all the different boxes and bags of things. She managed to get the box of goldfish open and started taking them out in handfuls. Of course Maggie caught on to that really quick and Elena had a great time feeding them to her. We let it go on for a little while because it was just so adorable, but decided to stop before Maggie ate the whole box. What did we do for entertainment before Elena? Life was sure boring.

one year

I'm a horrible blogger. It's been really long since I've posted anything so whatever I post should be a welcome change. Elena is already a year old, I can't figure out where all that time went so quickly. She's working on her fourth molar now, and I can't wait until it finally comes through. She's been really crabby lately and I think that could be the reason. Or at least one of them. She's been getting sick a lot. Just when we think she's almost over the cold she has, she gets something else. It's been going on like that for a month now and her mom and dad are getting real sick of getting up in the night with her only to be thrown up on. Other than that she's doing great. Walking all along the furniture, getting into EVERYTHING, and getting more hair. We think it looks like she might be getting some curls, we're definitely hopeful. She's doing a lot of "talking", but not saying any real words yet.