I am having some level of difficulty with the edge and face loops. I feel like I have everything connected right, and yet the Alt Click behavior is showing me otherwise, as things aren't looping the way I expected. I'm not sure what could be the issue. For some reason, some faces aren't be registered as faces. I was checking my normals, and some faces don't have them. So I tried face selection and noticed I couldn't click on some of them as a face. And yet, I cannot tell a difference between them and the other (apparently "true") faces.
I figured out the answer. I wasn't paying attention enough. I thought by selecting the two vertices that, when connected, would create the appearance of a face, it would automatically create that face if I hit CTRL+F. I had to actually select the three edges surrounding and then create the face using CTRL+F.