Addicted!

I think I must be addicted to blogging!! I usually think during the days about what I will write about in that day's post - and today, even though I was going to give it a rest for a few days, I again found things I wanted to say, so have given in and here I am after just one day's break!
The first thing is that we seem to be on the up again with our moods. After several days of being miserable we are both in better frames of mind.
We are doing about 10 minutes at a time of sounds and words - Pete can now write 'Martin' without copying and we are working on 'Adrian', and I regularly spell out lots of family names which Pete writes with no trouble. When I ask him to write the first letter of words, he gets it right about 75% of the time. Sometimes he can write simple words like cat, cow, fox, if I ask him to. Bev came today for speech therapy and so I had one lovely hour to myself! She said she quite understood why Pete didn't want to go to the aphasia group yesterday, but we will revisit the situation in a few months which is fair enough. She said they had a good session today although I am not sure what they did, but apparently he definitely said 'meow' when she said something about cats!! Probably not too useful in everyday conversation, but still very good!!!!
We did try the new exercises yesterday but didn't get on too well with them as Pete seemed to do a lot of wobbling when doing one foot in front of the other! Today Suzanne has done them again and I think I was probably expecting too much from Pete. She says this exercise is very difficult for him but just to keep on trying it and his balance will get better, it is very normal for him to wobble at the beginning, it will slowly improve the more he does it. She has also swapped the standing on his toes exercise to one where he has to just squat a bit (not to get right down, just slightly) and then push back up. It is easier for him to transfer the weight to his right leg with this exercise and this is what she wants, for the right leg to work. If he doesn't work it regularly in lots of different ways then his brain will neglect that side and it won't improve. She always starts now with Pete warming up by walking up and down the hall a few times with no stick. He is getting on well with the FES now, to the extent that he has put the ankle brace away in the drawer! It was obviously all down to placing the electrode pads in the right place!! I regularly renew the ink lines and Pete can very nearly get them on in the right place - it can be a bit awkward for him trying to see the lines solely due to their position.
The last thing to talk about today is that, for the last 3 days, Pete has planned and prepared our main meal by himself - even down to making the gravy on Monday. He could probably now almost cook it all - it is just dishing it up that could be a problem with one hand. Big steps indeed!!
He has also been washing and drying the dishes on his own at times. Greasy dishes defeat him but that is not surprising.
You can probably tell that I am feeling more upbeat just by the tone of this post! I will definitely carry on posting often and regularly!