Jaymes, Jaymes, the musical fruit...

No, this isn't actually a bodily function related post, it was just stuck in my head and I thought it would make an excellent title. What can I say, I have a very juvenile sense of humor. That comes with the territory. The territory being Jaymes.

Yesterday, courtesy of my little lovemuffin, we had a couple of near-death experiences. My life did not, however, flash before my eyes like a lot of people. I was too busy shooting lava out of my eyeballs at Jaymes to do speed-reminiscing about the last 23 years of life.

We have car issues. By We, I mean Mr. Jaymes and mommy. He doesn't do this stuff with daddy. With daddy, the worst thing he will do is unclip his seat belt, throw his booster seat on the floor, and lay on the back seat. With mommy, it's a little more extreme. I think that's what I'll call driving Jaymes to therapy on Wednesdays (or any time I drive him somewhere and it's just me and him): Extreme Munchkin Delivery. Because really, what other word does justice to the jumping, window opening, shoe tossing, wheel grabbing, button punching, gear shifting tornado that is my son?

Since clearly you all want the hairy details, I'll try and recount our adventure yesterday. At least, the parts I haven't lost to dissociation due to Post Traumatic Stress. Ok, I'm being dramatic. We COULD have died, but yeah, it wasn't that close, nor that traumatic. I'm getting used to every drive being a 50/50 shot of coming home alive.

Before I begin, let me tell you about the state of NC and their idiocy. Last year, there existed a program through Medicaid, that paid for car restraints for special needs children. We got an EZ-On Vest, which is basically a harness made of seatbelt material. It zips around your child, with two straps that go between the legs, and hooks at the back to a mount in the back dash of your car. The child then sits on a booster seat, with the seatbelt buckled over the lap. MOST kids, no matter have slippery, stay in this. Jaymes sort of did. He stayed in the harness when it was kept super tight, but he did not keep the seatbelt on because they didn't send the seatbelt button cover thingy. Eventually, some bright soul stole the damned strap that held Jaymes by the harness to the car, and so we've had a useless harness ever since. (by the way, if you need one and have a small child, 25-35 pounds, I've got one I'll sell for a lot less than they retail for). The replacement strap is EXPENSIVE. Normally this wouldn't be an issue- except that this year, Medicaid cut the funding. So apparently, the state of NC would rather pay the thousands and thousands of dollars of care a child who has gone through the windshield will require, rather than a couple hundred for a preventative device. Ok. I won't even start in on the lack of logic there. Or at how upsetting it is that these companies can take something it probably costs $25 to make, slap the words "medical equipment" on it, and sell it for $400-600. The whole EZ-On Vest setup would have been $600 w/out insurance. The little screw that held on the mount on the car was $100 alone. The harness? $400 or so. It's been awhile, but I remember being shocked at the prices on the invoice.

Anyway, now that I'm totally off on a tangent here... Yesterday was OT day. We have a late afternoon appointment, so we usually take off around 4:45 to get out there in time. In the past few trips, Jaymes had been taking off his seatbelt and wandering the back seat aimlessly, knowing I couldn't do anything about it. I have a serious phobia about pulling over on the highway, the cars come too fast for me to ever be able to pull back in. I don't want to get rear ended.

This trip started out like all the rest, Jaymes in his carseat in back with his giant stuffed snake, his filthy pink blanket, his rag of what was once a stuffed horse, and his theraband thingy tied to the back of my seat for him to yank on, chew on, whatever.

All this lasted him about 5 minutes. Driving down the road, suddenly a little head pops into the front seat, and Jaymes leaps into the passanger seat. I pull over, into a parking lot. I think to myself "ok, I don't want him doing that on the highway, and maybe I will have better control if I keep him up front with me." The airbags up front turn off when there isn't enough weight in them, and Jaymes, his toys, and his carseat do not trigger it on. So it seems relatively safe. As safe as having a kid in the front can be, at least. So, Jaymes gets buckled in, and off we go. He plays with the radio, but that's the worst until we've been on the highway for awhile. At 65 MPH down I-40, Jaymes decided it was time to make the drive more exciting.

He shifted. How he knew to hold the button down, and then shift, I don't know. Thankfully he shifted us into neutral, if he'd done park or reverse we'd have been toast and so would my transmission. I wonder if the bumper-to-bumper warranty would have covered that. Hmm.

Back to the story. Put the car back into drive, and slapped Jaymes' hands away from things. He giggled, and kept on trying. So I drove most of the way with one arm pinning him to the seat, hoping not to get pulled over, or worse, to die a painful, flaming death. He settles briefly, so I let him go. next thing I know, shoes are off, and window is opening. Sock goes flying out into traffic. Glad it wasn't a shoe. Or a big hard Elmo toy. I bellow at him to shut the window, he does so, giggling. I pray he doesn't try to open the door. Unlike the back seat doors, the front can't be child locked. He knows he can't open the back ones, and thankfully that carried over to the front too. Every time his hand moved toward the door, I screeched at him. It startled him for a few minutes, and that's about it. he thought the whole trip was a barrel of laughs. He doesn't understand that he could kill us doing this garbage.

We made it, in one piece, to the therapy place. I resisted the urge to drop Jaymes off in front of the building and jet off, and we went inside. I'm guessing my face was still bright red from the yelling, flailing panic that had been the trip there, and I'm sure his therapist thinks I'm even more nutty than she already had. On the plus side, she took the situation very seriously, which I appreciate. It annoys the heck out of me when people make light of a major issue.

Jaymes went to the bean table, therapist gave me an activity too. I have to say that cracks me up- I think it's awesome. I love that therapist, she's very creative in how she does things. Anyway, she gave me some of that plastic lace stuff you make keychains out of at summer camp. We called it "boondoggle" back at horse camp in upstate NY, I don't know what you call it in the south. Plastic lacy stuff? Therapist showed me how to do it, and set me to making a chew toy for Jaymes. It was actually very calming, which I needed, and a lot of fun. I remembr loving those things as a kid. Jaymes thinks it's pretty nifty to gnaw on too.

The therapy session went well, as usual. Jaymes actually ate some strawberries, blueberries, and apples. He was a little bit stubborn, but she handles him perfectly. Found out that Jaymes long anticipated speech board thing should be here in the next couple weeks- yay! Very exicting. Now comes the fight to get the school to go along with it.

The drive home was not bad. A new Theraband thingy tied to the handle on the top of the door amused Jaymes. He punched a couple buttons, but thats it. Thank goodness, my nerves were about shot, and I was really nervous about how he would do coming home. Good Jaymes.

You guys know me, if I'm not laughing during the fact, I will be soon after. Being Jaymes' mom has given me the ability to laugh at EVERYTHING. Looking back on it, I'm sure we'd have made a funny spectacle. God only knows what the people in the cars around us were thinking.

An evening of heart attacks, giggling, and summer camp crafts. Life is good. Autism can make things more difficult, but it always makes it more interesting.

Video: Jaymes coloring with sidewalk chalk and talking lots! He says his name a few times, says green and blue, and Sierra has to make an appearance.