Taylor's First Day of Preschool & Maddy is 11 Months!

Taylor's First Day of Preschool! 
Well, it happened - today, my little girl began what will be the beginning of a long educational journey. Sam and I took the day off today to take her to her first day of preschool at the Minooka United Methodist Church. She was slightly nervous (as was I), but she did great! She loved her teacher, Mrs. Davis, and really enjoyed having her buddy Evelyn in class. There were no tears, both from Taylor or myself!
We picked her up and went to brunch with Evelyn and her mom, and then spent the day playing outside together. Overall, it was a very memorable day! We can't wait to see how the rest of the school year goes!

Our big girl, ready to go!

Waiting with her friend Evelyn!

Taylor with her teacher, Mrs. Davis

Getting annoyed with mommy taking pictures!

Being silly!

Maddy is 11 Months Old! 
Our little munchkin is 11 months old! Let the countdown begin to her first birthday!
She is officially on all whole milk and eating table food. She loves everything she tries, but especially fruit, avocado, chicken nuggets, and yogurt.
She has turned a corner with her gross motor skills, and within 2 weeks went from sitting up, to army-crawling, to pulling herself up in her crib! She is trying so hard to pull herself up on furniture, so I'm sure she'll be doing it in a couple of days! She really is all over the place. We will place her down in the family room and 2 minutes later she's across the room in the kitchen.
She loves babbling and has said "mama", "dada", "night-night", "hi", and we think she might be trying to say "no" but it sounds more like "nah".
She is becoming quite the toddler. She gets very upset and cries whenever she is told "no" or something is taken away from her. She loves exploring and getting into everything, so this happens often throughout the day!
She had an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago with Dr. Smith, and her kidney is slowly shrinking back to it's normal size after her surgery. Dr. Smith said that it may never be a "normal" size, but that it is still fully functional, and actually looks like it is healing better than he thought it would! We were very happy about that news!

So big!

She loves her food!

Look what I can do!

And Finally, Our Quirky Little Girl...
Taylor was in time-out last Friday quite a bit. While she was in there, she apparently thought it was ok to spit all over the floor. That was the last straw, so I carried her up to her room and told her she needs to go to bed. I went up to check on her about a half hour later (after not hearing any noise - very unusual for her!) and panicked when I didn't see her anywhere! I looked all around, and then finally opened her closet door. This is what I found...

I thought it was especially hilarious that she was still in her "bride dress". Picking her up out of here and putting her to bed was a chore, but she clearly needed some sleep!