A Couple of Sick Kids

Time for the weekly update!

Claire and Allie are two sad, sick kids. It started about a week ago when Allie started getting a nasty cough that is just painful to listen to. She must have decided that she wasn't getting enough sympathy from Kayley and I, so she added a new trick: making herself throw up by coughing after eating! Now, Allie has always been a champion puker (I once told Kayley that Allie "is like a bulimic at a buffet". I'm so impressed with myself over that one that I still chuckle whenever I think about it.) but lately she seems less like a baby girl and more like the fountains at the Bellagio. This morning she woke up for her usual feeding which Kayley very graciously takes care of without waking me up. (I've got the best wife!) Twenty minutes later my wonderful wife (Remember, I have the best one!) came back and woke me up to ask if I would take Allie so she could have a shower. I rolled over and, sure enough, Allie had drenched Kayley's entire left side, front and back.

Claire, seeing all the attention Allie has been getting, chose today to get in the game herself. This morning she told us a few times that she wasn't feeling well, so we decided that since Kayley had a talk to give today (Follow the prophets was the topic. She felt like she didn't do that well, but a couple of people told her they thought it was the best one of the day.) I would stay home and take care of both the girls. Well, we mostly had a good day until Claire went down for her nap. An hour into it I heard her scream her head off. When I got back to her room I saw her kneeling in her bed doing her best to empty her stomache of the scrambled eggs she had eaten for breakfast. Yum.

Things don't show any signs of getting better, so Kayley is going to take tomorrow off work to take the girls to the doctor.

Anyway, the above photos are:
the cutest picture of Allie to date
a sick Claire-bear asleep on the couch
and the whole fam the day Allie was blessed.

Is it too late for a Halloween Update?

The way I see it, as long as it's not Thanksgiving yet it's not too late to talk about Halloween.

Given that Claire loves, loves, loves the Disney princesses, it's no big surprise that she chose to dress up as Sleeping Beauty. (It's interesting to me that she loves watching Sleeping Beauty so much, since for about six months whenever she watched it during the day, that night she would have nightmares about a witch being in her room. Well, she's three years old, so I guess logic has nothing to do with it.) We tried to convince her to be a cute little witch so that we could dress Allie up as her black cat, but once she saw the princess dress in Toys'R'Us there was no disuading her. The hardest part for Claire was buying the costume and then having to wait a couple of weeks for Halloween to wear it. Nearly every day she would exclaim "Mommy, I'm going to be a PRINCESS!" To which Kayley would say, trying to sound excited too, "Yes, you are!" Claire would tilt her head to the side in a way that says "I'm cute. Can you deny me anything?" and plead, "Can I wear my costume nooooow?" At this point Claire found out that, yes, we can deny her anything. But when she finally got to put it on, she was so excited that she could hardly contain herself. She twirled around the house, she walked around holding the hem up just like a little lady and every couple of minutes she would ask, "Daddy, don't I look beautiful?" I would dutifully reply that I had never seen anything so pretty and that I could now die a happy man.

Allie wore an orange T-shirt that says "Baby's First Boo". She didn't seem particularly excited about it.

Along with the Halloween photos, I've put up some pictures of a corn maze we went to and when we went to a pumpkin patch to choose (what else) pumkins. Oh, and a picture of Allie on a swing, 'cause it's kinda' cute.

Gettin' Started!

Well, here we go! Kayley and I have always been slackers in two areas in particular: keeping in touch with friends and family and keeping a journal. Hopefully this will be an answer to both those problems.
For everyone who doesn't know, July 3rd gave us a new addition to the family. We now have a beautiful, happy girl by the name of Allie Kay Throop! I should clarify that a bit: She is now a happy girl, but for the first two months she was convinced that life was nothing but miserable. In a matter of seconds Allie would go from being completely calm and content to a high pitched, ear piercing scream that tells parents that their kid must have lost a leg. I've always heard about how bad cholic is from other parents, and I've been sympathetic, but now I'm convinced that you can't comprehend how bad it is until you've experienced it. Thankfully, she got over that phase sometime is September and now she is one of the happiest babies out there. She loves to smile her big, cute toothless smile (I'm gonna miss it when she starts getting teeth.) and no one can make her belly laugh like her big sister Claire!
Speaking of Claire, she couldn't be happier to be a big sister and she's really good at it! All day long we hear "Can I hold Allie?", "Can I feed Allie?", "You're so cute Allie!" Claire can spend an hour dancing and making funny faces and noises just to make Allie happy.
Also, our little Claire-bear has shown us that the Throop and Kirkland genes for really, really, amazingly smart people has carried on to the next generation. She can already name almost every letter in the alphabet and tell you what sound each makes, count to twenty (most of the time) and recognize written numbers up to ten! (That's stuff that most kindergarteners can't do at the beginning of the year.) Every so often Claire will remind us that when she turns 5 she'll be able to start going to school "just like Mommy and Daddy!"
This last semester Kayley started taking a college course to work toward a reading endorsement which means she'll start making the big bucks! (Oh, wait... she's in public education where they don't pay you more no matter how qualified and talented you are.) Still, she's really happy to be teaching full day kindergarten again, and she's especially happy at the school she's teaching now since it's only a couple of blocks away from home.
Kayley is also thrilled to have a newborn again. To her, having two kids just means that she's twice as happy as she was. (Compared to having kids, being married to me barely registers on her happiness meter, and really, can you blame her?) Just like after we had Claire, Kayley can spend hours holding Allie and staring at her while she sleeps (Something I'll never understand. It's just so boring!)
As for me, I'm still plugging away at a degree in biochemistry and, in fact, should be studying for a test I have tomorrow which is reportedly the hardest test of the year. But in the words of Arlo Guthrie, "You can't always be doin' what you're supposed to be doin'." Next semester I'm taking such fun-sounding classes as Principles of Genetics and Cellular Communication by Small Molecules and Proteins. Woo-hoo! I can feel the adrenaline pumping already! But seriously, I think it's amazing what our bodies do thousands of times every second and I do enjoy the classes.
Anyway, that's the update and we'll do our best to do this every week so that those who are interested can find out what's happening in our endlessly exciting lives.