Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords spoke for the first time since she was shot in the forehead, her spokesman said Wednesday, yet another significant milestone in her recovery from a traumatic brain injury. 
 
 Giffords first spoke within the past few days and is speaking "more and more," spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Wednesday. He didn't know what her first words were, but said at breakfast one morning she asked for toast. 
 
 "She's working very hard and it's paying off," he told The Associated Press. "We're elated at this. We always knew Gabby is a fighter and that she's not going to let this thing win. And you know, every day is proof of that." 
 
 Six people, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, were killed in the attack outside a grocery store where Giffords was meeting with constituents. Thirteen people, including Giffords, were injured. 
 
 Other news organizations, including Politico, earlier reported that Giffords had asked for toast and was able to speak. 
 
 In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Giffords' husband Mark Kelly said his wife had her appetite back and was eating three times a day, "even though it's hospital food." 
 
 "It is hard to believe that only one month has passed since Gabrielle was shot," he wrote. "The doctors say she is recovering at lightning speed considering her injury but they aren't kidding when they say this is a marathon process." 
 
 He said "there are encouraging signs every day," pointing to her renewed appetite. 
 
 "Your prayers are being heard, so don't stop," he wrote. 
 
 Kelly, a NASA astronaut, said last week that he expects his wife to be well enough to be at his space launch in two months. 
 
 The space shuttle Endeavour will leave April 19 for a two-week mission to the International Space Station, and Kelly will be on board leading a veteran, all-male crew. The mission will be Endeavour's final flight and Kelly's fourth. 
 
 Dr. Gerard Francisco, who is treating Giffords at a rehabilitation facility in Houston, said Tuesday that he hopes the congresswoman can make enough progress to attend the space launch, but said it's too early to say. ||||| U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is speaking, her staff confirmed today. 
 
 Her chief of staff, Pia Carusone, told the Arizona Daily Star this evening that she doesn't feel it's her place to share what the congresswoman's first words were since being shot Jan. 8. She said she doesn't know whether Giffords' first words were spoken to the congresswoman's husband, Mark Kelly, or to a speech therapist. 
 
 "I think Mark and Gabby would be happy to share those intimate details at their own pace," Carusone said. 
 
 But among the phrases she has spoken, Giffords has asked for toast with her breakfast, spokesman C.J. Karamargin said. 
 
 �?It’s huge and it’s great,�? Karamargin said. �?It’s very big news and we are all very excited.�? 
 
 Giffords, 40, was shot through the left side of her brain Jan. 8. The left side of the brain controls speech. There had previously been no news as to whether she could speak. She is receiving rehabilitation therapy at a Houston hospital. 
 
 Carusone told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric tonight that she was having breakfast a few days ago with Giffords, who had oatmeal and yogurt, when she asked for toast. "It wasn't the first time she'd spoken," Carusone said. "I smiled and I said, 'We're happy to get you toast.'" 
 
 "It's obviously difficult to watch someone you love and respect to go through ... something so difficult" as this brain injury, Carusone said. "But she's doing so well ... It's very encouraging." 
 
 She also told Couric that Giffords does know about and supports her astronaut husband's decision to return to space to captain the space shuttle Endeavour in April. He's kept her up to date with his thinking, Carusone said. "She certainly understands it." 
 
 Read more of this story in Thursday's Arizona Daily Star. ||||| TUCSON, Ariz. — On Monday, when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s breakfast was delivered to her Houston hospital room, she asked for something else: toast. 
 
 It might not seem like much, but one month after a failed assassin fired a bullet into her brain, such seemingly small milestones in her long recovery have helped sustain Giffords’s inner circle — family, friends and aides — as they cope with last month’s Tucson massacre by sharing in her progress and continuing to serve her constituents. Giffords is now eating three meals a day — as her husband, Mark Kelly, announced Tuesday on Facebook — and as she did Monday, speaking is the latest sign of progress. 
 
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 reset VIDEO: Rep. Giffords talking, asks for toast POLITICO 44 
 
 Over the past month, her aides have been forced into one of the worst crisis management tests ever faced by a congressional office. 
 
 It’s hard to imagine any small staff dealing with such a sprawling, massive and sustained ordeal — and the staffers have done it in the absence of their leader and three of their colleagues, one of whom was killed and two of whom have not returned to work since being shot. (See: Intern gets back to work in Arizona) 
 
 Even the outpouring of support can be a logistical nightmare: Giffords’s district office has logged nearly 20,000 contacts in the month since the rampage. 
 
 They deal with these challenges by answering the oft-repeated question: “What would Gabby want?” 
 
 At the center of the entire Giffords operation is her 30-year-old chief of staff, Pia Carusone, who has been running Giffords’s Tucson and Washington offices from spartan side rooms at Houston’s TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital with her BlackBerry, a Mac computer and a tiny, 3-by-5-inch reporter’s notebook containing four weeks’ worth of daily to-do lists. She cadged the notebook from an FBI agent in Arizona when she realized she needed to keep track of all her tasks. (See: Recovering, Giffords speaks) 
 
 It travels with her, as do a black-and-white lapel ribbon and three bracelets — a white one bearing the date of the shootings; a blue one with a heart symbol, a peace sign and the name “Gabby”; and a red one that keeps her curls under control when it’s not clinging to her wrist. 
 
 Carusone was at home in Washington on Jan. 8 when an aide called to tell her there had been a shooting. A second aide confirmed that Gabe Zimmerman, Giffords’s outreach director, had been killed and that the congresswoman had been shot in the head. Carusone called Kelly and packed a bag with all the wrong clothes — save for the black suit she would wear to three funerals. 
 
 “All I thought was, I might be going to a funeral,” she said in an interview with POLITICO in Houston on Monday. She’s been buying clothes as necessary ever since, having spent just five hours at home in Washington since the shootings. 
 
 She contacted the White House, a handful of congressional colleagues and the House sergeant-at-arms. Within minutes, her phone was flooded with so many calls that she couldn’t dial out. (See: Echoes of Tucson on the House floor) 
 
 Before she got to Tucson, she had to push back on erroneous reports that Giffords was dead. Carusone had just spoken with Giffords’s mother when the news broke. It wasn’t true. 
 
 “This is inaccurate. She is in surgery,” she wrote in an e-mail message that she copied, pasted and sent to members of the media.
– Another milestone in Gabrielle Giffords' recovery: She's starting to speak for the first time since last month's shooting. As noted first by Politico, she asked for toast with breakfast earlier this week and since then has been speaking "more and more," a spokesman tells AP. “It’s huge and it’s great,” he adds to the Arizona Daily Star. "It’s very big news and we are all very excited.” Husband Mark Kelly said Giffords is eating three times a day and enjoying it, "even though it's hospital food," he wrote in a Facebook post. "The doctors say she is recovering at lightning speed considering her injury but they aren't kidding when they say this is a marathon process."