Chapter 78: climbing up again

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Kristin's POV:

We took a quiet weekend and we all needed it. Wilbur's birthday was on Tuesday but his actual party wasn't until next weekend so we demoted all shopping and preparations to Monday at the earliest. We went on a family walk which we'd never done before.

Getting Tommy out on a walk was normally quite an important part of the day. It avoided him feeling trapped at home (which made him anxious) and gave him a chance to get a load of his energy out. But with Tubbo in a wheelchair (or on his crutches) finding accessible walks for the whole family was difficult. That was until Phil searched it up and found one about 20 minutes away. So we hopped in the cars and went off on Saturday afternoon.

The weather hadn't quite turned yet, so whilst there was a cold breeze, with the sun out, it was nice. Techno went charging off ahead with Tommy, finding trees to climb and interesting sticks to attack each other with. Phil and I tried not to worry. Techno would be 18 soon and even then, he was a very responsible 17 year old. It seemed that giving Tommy time with his brothers was helping, definitely after the gaming session on Friday. Maybe having adults constantly hovering brought about more trauma and stress than we realised.

Wilbur and Tubbo hung back. Wilbur pushed Tubbo's wheelchair along (which we had brought on the agreement that for physio Tubbo would walk as far as he could on crutches before moving into his wheelchair) and Tubbo was keeping up a good pace next to him. A good nights sleep had shaken the migraine and he seemed a lot happier now Tommy was perking up.

And with all our boys occupied, it meant Phil and I walked between the pairs, hand in hand, having our own conversation. Most of it was about who was taking Wilbur and his friends to the ice skating rink next weekend. We were finding that it made more sense to take all the boys out and find something nearby for the rest of us to do. Both of us were racking our brains trying to work something out and the conversation only ended when we caught up with Techno and Tommy who were both half way up a tree.

"Techno, be careful please, we don't need any broken bones."

"We're fine Mum! Tommy's a better climber than I am anyway." I looked at my husband and shrugged, there was a rock climbing place near to the ice rink. we both knew it. Wilbur and Tubbo came to stand next to us. 

"Mate, you know how next weekend, Wilbur is going to the ice rink with his mates?" Phil asked Tubbo, he nodded. "There's a rock climbing wall nearby, we could go to it whilst Wilbur is doing his thing. I know physical stuff isn't your favourite thing, but how would you feel about me calling them to see if they could make it accessible?"

"That s-s-s-sounds g--good-d-d."

"Good, no promises, but maybe they'll have a way for you to enjoy it."

"MA!" Tommy said, and it was one of the first words he'd said in days.

"What's up bud?" I asked, moving closer towards the tree.

He climbed up higher, until he reached the very top of viable branches on the tree and giggled. "You're very high up, almost as tall as Techno huh?" He looked at his eldest brother, metres below him and laughed. It was so nice to hear him laugh, it did really feel like things were getting better now.

"Are you going to come down and see if we can find some other trees to climb?" I offered, holding my hand out, hoping he wouldn't just jump.

"Yea," he said happily and Techno said something I couldn't hear but which sounded like 'don't jump, climb down slowly'. I hope it was that, and by the way Tommy climbed down, it was probably that.

He did hold my hand when he got down from the tree but with the way he was running along the path, he didn't hold on to me for long. Luckily for me, Techno had soon caught up and brought with him a short stick, resembling a kind of sonic screwdriver. On his way past us, he got one of Tommy's sonic screw drivers from Tommy's backpack, swung over Phil's shoulder. The two of them were quite happy and in fact, everyone was quite happy.

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