June 26, 2006 - Late Evening

Last week was a good week and Amanda continued making great progress. Her second lumbar block went well and her complaints about her foot have changed from "pain" to "discomfort" so we're keeping our fingers crossed that the trend continues. She's even able to use a walker during therapy now. (They had not been able to use it for a while because our clever girl would put her weight on the walker and hop on the 'bad' foot instead of putting it down and using it.) Her sense of humor is increasing by the day and her normal impish threat of "flashing" is regularly making its appearance. The monthly family update meeting is this Thursday and we anticipate a good report all around.

Today's picture is from Mandy's last visit with Chris & Dacia. She was fortunate enough to spend more time with them this weekend and Dacia shares the following "Chris and I were lucky enough to get to see Amanda twice this weekend. On Saturday night, they came over to our house for a party we were throwing. I think Mandy felt a little overwhelmed by all of the people who were there, and she spent most of the evening working on word puzzles and chatting with the people that she knows. Besides Kurt, Gene & Christine, Kevin & Joyce and a few other familiar faces were there. She told us on Sunday evening when we had dinner with her and Kurt that, "she had a good time at the party but didn't bother to talk to people she didn't know."

Sunday evening was the most interactive I’ve seen her. She made a few jokes and laughed a lot. She called us by name without any prompting, asked questions about our cats and wanted to know if our “lives are going good.”

There was a family sitting behind us with an unruly toddler who kept screaming and it was pretty disruptive. At one point Mandy said, “that kid is annoying the S**T out of me.” A few minutes later she leaned over to me and said, “Seriously, that kid is like having a bad dog who keeps barking.”

When Chris ordered a beer with his dinner Amanda told him not to get drunk. Later, when the waitress asked if he wanted another and he said yes, Amanda commented, “Chris, you are so predictable.”

Kurt mentioned that Amanda will be spending more time at home on the weekends and he thinks it would be a good idea for her to do more “girlie” things and he asked if I would do some with her. Amanda's recent trip with TAnn to Victoria's Secret must still be on her mind because she chimed in and said, “yes, we can go shopping for bras and panties!” Whatever "girlie" things we end up doing, I am certainly looking forward to it."