March 29, 2006 - Late Morning

We have 2 updates today. Some of the Brinker Heads had lunch with Amanda yesterday (see picture to the left), and Lori was kind enough to share some cute stories. The second update is from Christine and about their fun evening last night.

From Lori: "We had such a good visit with Amanda today. We brought her a beef nacho salad from Taco Bueno. She use to order that all the time when we would go. She loved that we brought her lunch and she tried to eat it, but just kept spitting it out, so we took it and got her lunch from the fridge. She ate that much better. She did say that Taco Bueno has the best tea ever and drank that. Jessica started picking at Mandy's salad and Amanda told her that she could eat it if she wanted to, so Jess did. After she finished it, Amanda said 'You did good today, Jess!' (By the way, she totally knows who we are now.) I started laughing and she asked if that was funny? I said yes, she just ate 2 meals. Amanda said,'Yes, she sure had a good time with my salad. That could have been my second dinner.' She only ate one cracker, ham, & cheese out of her lunchables. I packed the others in a zip lock bag and told her that if she gets hungry later, she can snack on these. She said "OK, I'll do that!" Then while I wasn't looking, she looked at Jess with a face shaking her head like 'NOT'. She was making us laugh so much today.

We brought her some cards signed by the Real Estate girls, the PD girls, and the Construction girls. We also brought some pictures of us from events at the office. We asked her who this group was in one picture and she said "That's the Real Estate Dept." She recognized some of the people and called them by name. There's a picture of us from the seventies (attached). She asked Jess "Is that you?" pointing to her dressed up with a big black afro on her head. I told her I still had that shirt in my closet. She told me "Well you shouldn't!" I said I don't wear it and she said "That's Good!"

The hard part was when we got ready to leave. I know she does this to Kurt because he told me, but this was our first time to experience it. We told her we had to go back to work and she said I'm coming with you. We explained that she had to work here and do her physical therapy and she said no. I don't want to do that. I'm coming with you guys. She said that about 4-5 times. The RA took her to the bathroom and we hugged her and told her bye and she said again, I'm coming with you. The RA took her to the bathroom and we left. I don't know if she was looking for us when she got out or not." [No worries Lori. Amanda knows how very loved she is and this is a positive (if sometimes painful) sign of our girl becoming more cognitively aware and that is a very good thing.]

From Christine: "It was great to meet Renee M. tonight. She is super sweet, of course! We (Kurt,Mandy,Renee & I) went grocery shopping...I thought it was fun, but Mandy was a bit whipped by the whole trip. She'd watch Kurt walk down an aisle, and then make comments about what he did/did not pick up, such as "Just look at him. He didn't pick up ANYTHING on this whole aisle! Why did he even go down it?" When he wanted to get her some green tea, she said "He's going to be depressed." I asked why & she said "because I'm not gonna drink it!" Renee also brought a tape of a trip to Alaska in 1993, when Mandy had very long, curly hair. Pretty cute! She didn't watch much of it, because she was deep into word finds. When Renee would ask her to "look at that", she would, and then comment about whatever it was. She knew Renee immediately when she arrived yesterday & told her therapists who she was, wtc. We are seeing see so much progress from where she was only a few months ago!!"