Pac-Mandy

Mandy ate. AND ATE. AND ATE. The docs started her on an appetite stimulant last week and holy cow has it ever kicked in. Thank goodness for that, because really, the whole supermodel waif look she had going so wasn't so much working for me. How many Kate Moss replicas does the world really need???

A post-chemo day normally consists of me begging ("Please, baby, will you eat some breakfast?") and pleading ("Honey, I will get you anything at all you want for lunch if you will just take a few bites. You name it and it is yours.") and bribing ("OK, really, I have $232 in cash on me right now. It's yours for just one teeny, tiny bite of food. Any food. I will even throw in a new Nintendo DS game"). Yeah, all this usually got me jack squat in the way of actual intake of actual food. Nothing. She has lost a substantial amount of weight. It, among about 3,426 other things, was keeping me up at night.

Fast forward to today. Today, post-chemo day. I wake up prepared with my usual lack of pride and willingness to do just about anything to get her to eat just about anything. She woke up slow, as always. She snuggled me for about an hour, as always. She looks up at me and says, "Can I have a cinnamon waffle for breakfast" as alwa--- huh? You are asking me for food? To eat? Really? I pinched myself, fully convinced it was a dream. OW! (I pinch hard, it seems.) So, about four pinch bruises later, I was convinced at least she thought she wanted it. Well, alrighty then. I made cinnamon waffles. She ate them. TWO of them. What the heck???

Then the unheard-of ... "Momma, can I have toad-in-the-hole?"

"Uhhhhhhhh, sure."

Now, for those of you thinking I am serving my kid reptiles. I am happy to report I am not. Well, okay, maybe once, but it was a bad a day and the guy said it was shrimp. I digress. Toad-in-the-hole is actually a piece of buttered toast with a hole cut in the middle in which you fry an egg. You cook it like a grilled cheese.

So,laughing at the folly of it all, I cook toad-in-the-hole, lamenting all along the sad little wannabe chicken who gave all to not be eaten. But Mandy ate it. Then she asked for another one. She ate it too. And drank two glasses of orange juice. Color me shocked.

She felt OK today. We went to the library and did some of the homework her teacher emailed me. Then lunch. She ate not one, not two, not three but four pieces of pizza.

Really? I think my kid has a tape worm. And, I just don't care!!! I was drunk with the sheer joy of seeing all she ate today. If you added up everything she has eaten in the last six months it would probably equal what she ate today.

I am so hoping we can kick the supermodel skinny look and go for the Queen Latifah look. Okay, a really short, pale, blonde Queen Latifah, but you get the picture. Healthy weight would be great.

And really? When you are this cute you could totally work the runway! Not that I am biased or anything. Thanks so much to the Children's Cancer Center and Thomas Bruce Studios for these Flashes of Hope pictures taken during Kite Camp!




I admit it. There is a slight possibility that I could, perhaps, maybe, be a tiny bit biased. Maybe. But, geez, they are cute!!!

Love to all~