April 9, 2006 - Early Morning

We have a piture of Amanda reading the blog. (She's keeping up with the posts and all of the comments left by her at-home cheerleaders - )

We also have a recap from Leslie of her Thursday visit with Mandy. "I met Mandy and Christine at CNS about 2:20 pm. When I arrived in the lobby, there sat Mandy in a chair and Christine on the couch. As soon as Mandy saw me, she stood up all by herself and said, “Hi, Leslie, it’s so good to see you,” and then gave me a big hug. I was so thrilled!!! She stood all by herself and remembered my name! We then put Mandy into her wheelchair, making her remember to buckle up, and then got into Christine’s Explorer and drove Mandy to see her OBGYN for her annual checkup at Medical City in Dallas.

As we drove down Hillcrest, Mandy pointed out Brinker, where she works. Once we arrived at Medical City, TAnn met us, as she just happens to work in the same building and on the same floor where Mandy had her appointment. (Wow, is that a big place or what?! Now I know why they use the word “City”.) Anyway, the staff at the doctor’s office was so nice and accommodating. They even gave Mandy a pair of scrubs to wear home and she looked so cute in them. She had to have the standard blood test drawn out of her arm, which she didn’t like at all, but she was very lady-like with her words and apologized if she was rude (which she wasn’t). Then when the doctor and nurse finished, she thanked them profusely and told them she had a nice time. Once we finished there, we told TAnn we would see her later at the apartment, and we were off to Valley View Mall to do a little shopping.

Turns out Bath & Bodyworks was Mandy’s favorite store, as she wanted to go back a second time, but we convinced her once was enough, we had other stores to visit. Next was a bookstore and when Mandy saw all the word puzzle books, she just ooed and awed and commented on how pretty they were. When Christine announced to Mandy that she would buy her one, Mandy replied with, “Really, oh thank you, that’s so nice of you, I love you.” (The one Mandy liked the most contained 596 pages, but at the rate she works at those books, she’ll be finished and needing a new one in no time). After cruising the mall for about an hour, we decided it was time to leave and find a restaurant and eat dinner.

Once we were in the car, Mandy was working on her word puzzle. She finished one from the time we left the mall until the time we got to the restaurant (she’s extremely fast). We ate dinner at the Salt Grass, just off of I635W. Once we got settled into the restaurant, Mandy decided she needed her book, so Christine retrieved it from the car and Mandy worked on it until her dinner arrived. When asked what she wanted to drink with dinner, Mandy replied that she wanted a certain glass of wine (the name she used escapes me), but we told her that we were not going to have drinks that night, just some iced tea. She was fine with that. Mandy ordered a chicken salad, but Christine wound up having to remove the chicken, because Mandy was taking too big of bites and then spitting them out into paper napkins. Mandy kept apologizing for doing that and Christine told her to stop taking such big bites, chew and swallow what she had in her mouth first before taking the next bite. Mandy would reply with, “Okay, I can do that, thank you.” Christine also ordered her some potato soup and once removing the big chunks of potatoes, Mandy ate the soup without spitting any out. Yea, Mandy!

After dinner, we drove her back to her apartment and got there about 7:30. TAnn was there waiting to tuck Mandy into bed. When it came time for Christine to do a little therapy on that left ankle, Mandy was not too happy about that! Christine told her she had to do it 4 times to the count of 30. She kept telling Christine she didn’t want to because it hurt, but what was so cute and funny was when Mandy would say, “No, stop, it hurts,” Christine would start counting aloud to 30 and Mandy would join in counting aloud, also, so we all joined in counting. It was really so cute, guess you had to be there. We got tickled by it. Then she would go back to working on her word puzzle. Anyway, it was so nice being together again with both Christine and Amanda. It was almost like old times.

Amanda can carry on quite the conversation with you, just like she used to. I gave her a kiss and hug goodnight and told her to give her babies a kiss for me because I love them, too, and she smiled so big that the cute little dimple in her upper cheek showed and she said, “Oh, thank you, that’s so nice, I will give them a kiss for you.” Well, that just thrilled me, again! I was just so amazed at how much progress she has made since I saw her about a month earlier at her house on a Saturday."