Afternoon out with Boy 3

Yesterday, Boy 3 had to go for a hospital appointment so I collected him from school a little bit earlier than I should have. We don’t get as many opportunities to do things when it’s just the two of - a hospital appointment or a trip to the orthodontist don’t really count.

We didn’t do anything exciting but I spent 3 hours laughing so I think it did us both good. We had a drive around, went to a cafe and then just had a mooch around Bramhall as it’s near to Stepping Hill. He is an absolute idiot and I don’t know how his friends and teachers cope with him! In the space of half an hour he had spilt my coffee twice and sloshed hot chocolate all over his crotch. He doesn’t stop talking, he is always doing stupid things and he never gets tired. The problem is that I find him hilarious although would never tell him that! He is brutal (but scarily accurate) in his observations of people and I must have hissed at him to shush about a hundred times.

Being diagnosed with cancer has really messed with my instincts and to be fair, I’m not sure I’ve ever got the balance between neurotic and neglectful quite right. When a lump appeared on the back of Boy 3’s neck a few weeks ago, I went into panic mode. The rational part of my brain told me that it was nothing but my recent experience with lumps has not exactly been a positive one so I thought I would mention it to the doctor when we saw him about something else. Anyway, the long and short of it is that it is just a swollen lymph node and absolutely nothing to worry about. The consultant said that if he had to show a medical student an ultrasound image of a “normal” lymph node then he would have no issue with showing them Boy 3’s. I felt slightly neurotic but then reminded myself of the times when I’ve probably been a bit crap (Boy 2 has broken a thumb and a finger - both times I had no idea until a few days later) and decided that these incidents have now cancelled each other out and that I’m probably fairly normal.