I convinced Jimmy with a little motherly guilt and some bribery to come home a night early. I told him I would take him to the Fair tonight and then we could go to Scandia tomorrow if we came home.
It took us 4 hours to get home from Gilroy. Traffic was brutal. We walked in the door and immediately had to grab the Doodle and get back in the car to go to the fair. Not my first, second or five hundredth choice of what I really wanted to do tonight. Especially with the Doodle and no help to bring with me.
Two words: OVER STIMULATED. Between the noise, the flashing strobe lights, crowds and being locked in his stroller, the Doodle wasn't having a very good time either. Luckily most of his autistic screaming was drowned out by the loudness of the crowd, the music and the rides. I couldn't see the Doodle's face but could tell he must be freaking out pretty bad based on the stares and bewildered faces made at him by the on-coming people in the crowd.
It was especially fun sitting down on one of the crowded benches trying to empty 3 sprinkle capsules of Depakote onto a spoon full of applesauce carefully being balanced on my knee. I guess people aren't used to watching a child get dosed anti-seizure medication at the fair.
Good times. And then it got even better.
Most of the kiddie rides the child has to be 36", which criteria the Doodle meets. Granted, most of the kiddie rides the parents are too big to go on the ride with the child, and the child is supposed to ride by themselves. That might be the case for a typical 3 year old but not a special needs child.
No way was I putting the Doodle Bug on a ride alone. He doesn't have the emotional capacity or understanding to handle it. He's pretty impulsive and would most likely jump out when the ride got up to speed. He's a trained escape artist and can wiggle his way out of even the best seatbelts and straps.
Then there were kiddie rides where the parents could go on the ride which was a great solution because I thought I could have Jimmy ride along with him and I could have at least gotten some cute pictures to scrapbook. But the non-English speaking Carnival workers wouldn't let him even though he's 5' 2" and bigger than some parents. I think maybe because he wasn't old enough but I'm still not sure with the language barrier and all. It's times like these I wish I would have paid better attention in Sophomore Spanish class or at least retained the properly effective curse words to use at such opportune times.
Reluctantly, I took the Doodle myself in full screaming mode on the Flying Elephant. I sat there with anxiety that the Elephant might not be able to fly with my weight on his back.
The waiting part was the hair-puller-outer. I guess they like to wait for the ride to get full before they take off, so we sat. And waited. And waited. The problem is, the Doodle doesn't have a patient bone in his body. The only thing he knows about waiting is that he doesn't like it.
He actually loved it (look at that little face) once they finally took off.
Since Jimmy was too big for the kiddie rides, he was bored out of his mind and he had no one to go on the big rides with since we brought the Doodle. Once I told him about the gang related stabbings after dark and he could see the police population ramping up, he was ready to go too.
By the time I got off the poor, overworked flying Elephant, I was ready to go. I'd had my fill of fun. $50 for one and a half hours of autistic behavior torture and I'm still trying to figure out how many Weight Watchers Points are in a Fair Corn dog. I had my heart set on my favorite food of all time, Fair Tacos. The soft, greasy rolled up kind with lettuce and some kind of unidentifiable meat, but they are gone. Ido. Terminado. No más.
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