My little Carebear

I dedicate this to the heartiest of travelers in our family, my little Phelan.

When planning this trip, we never thought about what would or could happen to each and every one in our family. We thought about things like we need to find kids for them to play with, we need to keep Casey off the ground so he doesn´t get sick, we need to teach the kids to walk with rocks in their pockets to throw at crazy dogs. Never did we think that everything bad would happen to just one of them. My poor little Phelan. Phelan has suffered more than anyone else in our family. He´s at the hardest of ages to travel with. Ryder is rational enough to know he needs to be quiet when things are tough, help out when we need him and go to bed when we say go to bed. We are rational enough to know that Casey can be shut up with food or in worse case scenarios, an orange Crush. But Phelan, oh Phelan. He´s young enough to still need naps, old enough to know how to scream for everything he wants. He´s been more sick than anyone else, hotter than everyone else because he´s completely attached to an old nasty Angels baseball hat someone gave him in Mexico and he´s been wearing a piece of elastic cord around his neck for almost two months that he calls his necklace. He wears the same clothes every single day probably in an attempt to keep something normal in his life. He hoards things in his pocks and when you rip his jeans off him late at night so that you can wash them, you pull out probably three matchbox cars, 15 nails, wrappers bottlecaps, ball bearings - it´s ridiculous.

But here´s my little guilty story about my little Carebear. Two days ago we went to this Biotopo hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Quetzal bird. Phelan was pooped as it was a 3,000 foot climb to the top and the night before we had gone climbing as well. I told him I´d turn around and do the easy loop with him and the rest of the group could catch up with us down the trail. As he was heading down the hill, he tripped and did a complete flip in the air and landed on his face. He knocked one of his teeth loose. I figured the reason he tripped to begin with is because of this - he´s been on antibiotics for a week as one of his fingers got REALLY infected. In this week it has blistered, cracked, peeled and turned several different colors. The previous 24 hours to the fall, he´d been throwing up while we traveled eight hours on different buses and made many runs to the bathroom. He also had only slept eight hours two nights in a row because we had to catch buses or get up early enought to see the elusive Quetzal.

The most amazing part of all of it is that he never once complained. Maybe he said he was tired or maybe hungry but that was it. As long as his pockets are filled, his elastic cord necklace is on, his baseball cap is on backwards, he´s good. He´s great in fact.

Don´t get me wrong, Ryder is a trooper as well. But, we expect him to be for some reason. We´ve all had our meltdowns, fit throwing, panic attacks but truly, Phelan has taken the brunt from puking, injuries, icky belly, scary experiences - you name it, Phelan has dealt with it. So, I raise a toast (of Orange Crush) to my little Trooper Bear. If I could invent a Carebear for him it would be red, with a camo shirt, an eyepatch, baseball cap and army boots. He´d love it and right now, I´d spend a fortune on it for him.