I'm surrounded by sickies!

Well, Nate has been hinting that he wanted me to take a whack at writing the blog this week, so here I am! He is actually having a little nappie in the other room so he should be surprised to see that I am actually doing it!

Things in the Throop household have been running fairly smoothly. After the craziness of the holidays it is actually nice to have things back to normal. Nathan keeps busy with studying and preparing his Sunday School lessons. I try to be home as much as I can in the evenings (with the exception of Thursday nights when I have my class). Claire is becoming more and more independent every day which is fun to watch but makes me a little sad sometimes. Allie is now proudly displaying two bottom teeth and is rolling and scooting everywhere! It shouldn't be long before she is crawling and I'm sure she will be into everything. I have been working hard to train Claire to keep the little pieces of her toys put away, in anticipation of Allie being more mobile but it's amazing that kids survive childhood, with all the 'dangers' around the house.

I suppose that the most exciting things that have been happening are the following 3:

1. Lots of snow! It seems like the groundhog was right and winter isn't about to be over. On Sunday morning, February 3rd we had a huge snowstorm. Claire was sick so I stayed home with the girls but Nate tried to go to church. They held sacrament meeting and then sent everyone home. Nate got the car stuck in the driveway when he came back and he and the neighbors spent the next 3 hours trying to help everyone out. Last weekend Claire and Nate decided to take advantage of all the white stuff and they went out to build a snowman. It was Claire's first snowman, they had tons of fun.

2. Sickness everywhere! It all started with Nate's sore throat the last week of January. He ended up with strep throat and the flu. It knocked him out for 3 days! The girls and I tried to spend as much time at my parents' house away from the germs as we could. We thought that we had dodged the bullet but the next weekend Claire had a sore throat and fever. Yep- strep throat. Allie and I were afraid that we were doomed but we both seemed escape the germs. Just when we were all healthy again Nathan started to get a cold. Claire and Allie have both ended up with stuffy noses and coughs. And poor Allie, her cough is the worst one! Believe it or not, as of today I am the only healthy one in the family (knock on wood) and everyone else seems to be on the mend. If I survive this I will consider it a small miracle!

3. Happy Anniversary to us! On Friday Nathan and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary! It seems to have flown by in some ways, but yet we feel like we have been together for much longer. Our lives have definitely changed in the last 5 years, but we feel like it has only gotten better.

Well, that's all the news from the Throop homefront. Nathan should be back next week to thrill you all with his comical commentary. Love you all!

To all two of you who actually read this thing, I'm sorry it's been so long since the last post. There are two reasons: first, for Christmas Kayley's awesome parents gave us a new computer that doesn't work with dial up internet, so we had to upgrade to high speed. Second, I was a little nervous about following that literary masterpiece I lovingly call "Don't Stand Underneath When They Fly By". (C'mon, you have to admit it was pretty good.)

Christmas was a sad time for our little Allie-bug. Remember the incessant crying and profuse puking that I wrote about a couple of months ago? Well, they never really went away completely, there was just sort of a lull between attacks. About a week before Santa's big day, she started up again and for a while there she stopped smiling and laughing altogether. If she wasn't screaming, she would just look at you with a blank look in her eyes. Kayley was already worried about Allie's coughing, but as time passed she wasn't able to help, she slipped more and more into basket case-ness. We ended up taking Allie to the doctor a couple of times over Christmas break. The first time they ran a bunch of tests for stuff like RSV and pneumonia, and they even put her in an MRI machine, but they couldn't find anything. The second time our normal pediatrician wasn't there, so the on-call doctor (who Kayley liked better than our normal guy) said it was probably just acid reflux. He thought that when the stomach acid came up it would drain back down into her lungs (ouch). So he told us some things we could do to help, and thankfully they worked. Now we have our big, toothless grin back (as evidenced by the picture above)! Well, not entirely toothless. She has two that are coming in now.


Claire had a good Christmas haul. Her favorite presents were a new princess bike and a Radio Flyer red wagon from Grammy and Grandpa Throop, although she was a bit disappointed that she'll have to wait until spring to ride them. Also, our big girl turned four this month! Some mornings she'll wake up and tell Kayley,"Mom, guess what! I'm still four!" The picture above is from Christmas Eve when the whole Buchannan family gets together to open new pajamas. She is doing her "I Love My New Jammies" dance.

Kayley is doing great! She has been going to a class every Thursday night for about four hours so that she can get her reading endorsement. She comes home beat, but she's happy to be working toward it, and we're all proud of her.

With the new year, I got called to be the gospel doctrine teacher in our ward. It's funny. When we first moved into the ward I thought I might like to try my hand at teaching gospel doctrine, but got called to be advisor and secretary to the young men's program, which I did not want to do. Still, I knew that the Lord was just trying to get me over my general dislike of adolescent boys, so I did it. After a year and a half working with them, when the bishop called me to teach Sunday School I asked if I could still be young mens secretary. Unfortunately he said no.

...Don't Stand Underneath When They Fly By!

It's fortunate for the rest of the world that at any given time, only two people have to shoulder the burden of being the parents of the cutest kids alive. It's been said that the unspoken animosity of evey mother who sees them and has to compare them to her own kids, the requests for DNA samples for future cloning, and the substantial cash offers for knowledge of conception techniques are enough to drive a person to an early grave! Kayley and I are holding up just fine though.

This last Wednesday Claire managed to amaze us.
For those who don't know, Kayley's uncle Bob is from Holland originally, so they have some Holland-y traditions in their family. One of which is that everyone in the extended family is invited to come for a St. Nicholas party the first Wednesday of December. There they eat traditional food and Bob's specialties (Like some really good split pea soup. (I know, you never thought you would hear the words "really good" and "split pea soup" in the same sentance. (Hey, look! I managed to get a triple paranthetical statement! Woo-Hoo!))), play Guitar Hero III (Who knew that Guitar Hero III was a traditional St. Nicholas game?), and toward the end of the night everyone sings a song (the top picture is of Claire and I singing) to invite St. Nicholas to come, at which point he arrives (along with a couple of helper wenches and his slave Black Pete) and gives everyone a present.

Before we proceed, a little info on our little Claire-bear is in order. Do you remember King Ahasuerus from the Book of Esther who would execute anyone who dared to approach or speak to him unbidden? Yeah, she's like that. There are only a few people that Claire will allow to speak to her without freezing up, among them are Grandma Mary Kay, Aunt Karen and Grandpa Throop (which is kinda' weird since she almost never sees him). The whole night she only ever interacted with other kids, and anytime an adult had anything to say to her she would cover her eyes until they got the message and went away. All the people who know Claire were sure she would throw a screaming hissy-fit when we tried to put her on St. Nicholas' lap.

As for Allie, she was just fine with people passing her around like a syringe at a Hollywood after-party as long as the person holding her had a bottle. ("Oh, you're going to feed me now? Fantastic!") I suppose I would be okay with that too if everyone told me how attractive I am the second the saw me. Hint, hint.

Anyway, St. Nicholas came in his bright red robe, Catholic bishop's hat and staff, sat down, and started calling names for the people he had presents for. After about fifteen minutes Claire's turn came and we all braced ourselves for the seemingly inevitable outburst that never came. Kayley carried her over and before she could set Claire on his lap, our little girl dove out and gave St. Nick a huge hug around his bearded neck.

If you have read as many poorly written novels as I have, you've noticed that the words "collective gasp" get thrown around quite a bit. It seems to be used ad nauseum by authors who really have no other literary means of expressing the importance of an event, and as such the impact of a collective gasp is lost. Whether giant termites emerge from their nest in city hall, or the twin suns of Betelgeuse IV come over the horizon, or Cousin Maude has a three legged baby, eveyone always seems to simultaneously suck in as much air as they can.

Well, I can tell you that a collective gasp is an impressive thing. If there would have been a log burning in the fireplace when Claire leaped into Santa's arms it would have been immediately extinguished from the sudden lack of oxygen. After her turn with St. Nicholas was over, she had a big smile on her face as she bounced back over to me to show off her new Littlest Pet Shop. All anyone could talk about for the rest of the night and the next couple of days was how brave our little Claire-bear was. Amazing.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, and if you see Santa and his reindeer, just remember the title of today's entry!

Sweet Relief! (Ya' know, 'cause we had sick kids)

Well, I am very, very happy to report that the girls are feeling better. Kayley and I finally got tired of all the pukin' and poopin' (and my goodness, there was a lot of both!) so we made an appointment with the doctor. Since Claire is such a shy little girl, we knew that she would throw a hissy fit when he came into the room. So, to try and prevent the hysterics before they started, we spent some time the night before the appointment practicing with her all the things he would probably do. (It came to me later that the pediatrician chose his profession he decided he wanted to have three year olds kicking, punching, puking and screaming in his face all day. Who am I to deny him his dream?) It turns out that Allie had a sinus infection, Claire had some fluid buildup behind her eardrums that made it hard for her to hear and they both had a touch of the flu. He game us some antibiotics and stuff to dope 'em up (It's disturbing to me just how much Claire loves to take medicine. If I still lived in that pot-head heaven known as Clearlake I would say her friends had been slipping her a little more than crackers at playtime.) and we all feel much better now.


I think I've mentioned this before, but Kayley loves her job. She especially likes it this year because she has a teachers aide all day, she's teaching all day kindergarten and her class size has been capped by the principle at 18 students. The reason for the cap is that Kayley has what she lovingly refers to as the "low kids" and what I jokingly call the "freakin' idiots" (I'm a bad person). Well, when she came home Tuesday she had a big smile on her face and practically skipped everywhere she went. Like I said, Kayley loves her job, but it's really emotionally and physically draining, so most days she comes home and has to collapse on the couch for a half hour before she feels like herself. So when she came home all spry and happy I couldn't help but notice. After about an hour of unrestrained bubbliness I finally asked what was going on. She sighed, looked off into the distance and with a euphoric smile said, "Five of my students were absent today!" I thought that was pretty funny.

I've got finals next week and I can already feel the ulcer starting. All three are comprehensive, so all this week I'll be trying to remember and relearn the equations, molecular names and electron pushing mechanisms that I've been studying for the past semester. (If you think that sentence is boring to read, imagine trying to do it!) All I can say is "Who needs sleeping pills?"