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.