Grades, Doctors and Bruises

Today's cardiology appointment was very unsuccessful. You see, they had to do an echocardiogram and that requires the same set up as when you have an ultrasound during pregnancy...dark, quiet room with a bed. Steff wasn't having any of it. She litterally screamed the entire 5 minutes that the tech tried to get her to cooperate. The only things the tech was able to do was to put on a few monitoring patches and try to look at her heart. Then she said something to the effect that it wasn't happening and that we'd have to reschedule and have her sedated!!!Ryan and I were not happy people. We were slightly upset with Steff for being so bratty but more upset that we paid a $50 copay for them to have to reschedule with sedation when we could have told them right from the get go that she would have to be sedated. Imagine what a waste of time and money that appointment was...we drive to Salt Lake only after waking everyone up a 6:00am and leaving by 7:15am just so we could make it through traffic and then we show up, pay an expensive copay, and they can't even perform the test she needs. All this because they failed to ask or mention the whole sedation idea....Frustrating....
Other than that, all else seems to be going well. Kieran had appointment with Dr. Kluthe yesterday. There weren't a whole lot of behavior issues to talk about since he's been such a great kid lately. The only thing that we've noticed is he's been hypersensitive emotionally. He'll cry for the littlest reasons and make a big deal out of things most of us would consider minor. The doc said there could be a couple of reasons for this: including some sort of grieving over his dad or a mild form of depression. I'm hoping for the first idea since he hasn't seemed to be doing a whole lot of grieving his dad. Doctor Kluthe said that children will mourn a parent for an average of 2 years, it doesn't matter what age you are when you lose a parent that's just the norm. He's said that he believes Kieran will take longer to grieve because he's been stuffing the grief process somewhere and somehow.
One other big thing I learned is that boys Kieran's age don't comprehend very well especially reading. You know when you're reading a book it's like watching a movie in your mind? Well, Kieran doesn't have the skills to do that yet. Interesting, huh? So, the doc said the best thing for me to do to help him learn this skill is to read to him each night. He said it will help him play the book out in his mind and learn how to make better judgements when he has impulse thoughts. The example he used is when you picture yourself telling your boss where the bears go and then you play the whole scenerio in your mind, including being fired and not being able to pay you car payment and other bills. He really made it clear that boys are much slower at learning this skill than girls...
We got Kieran's midterm and he has all 1's(or A's) except in one subject and that's a 3. Imagine this, it's reading that he doesn't have a 3 in. After what the doc said, I can see why his grade isn't a 1.
Sadie has been well. The only thing really new to report is she looks like she is abused. I promise we treat her like the little princess that she is, she's been pulling herself up on things that are not steady so she falls, or pulls things on top of herself. As of right now she has 3 brusies on her face. Other than that she is great. She still gives kisses but a lot more sparingly and she's been babbling, "dada, dada, dada." We think she's really saying it but it's so hard to tell.
Ryan and I are doing wonderful as usual with nothing new to report. He's been super loving towards us all and I've been reading Boundaries with Kids. That's the latest and greatest with us.