<p>OK, I’ve been following this thread & am finally de-lurking.</p>
<p>S1 graduated from UVA in May; currently working paid summer internship & looking for a FT job. S2 graduated from HS in June; currently lifeguarding & busy “fouling the nest” until he heads off to W&M in 4 weeks. No shopping sprees because he is not interested & we can recycle much of S1’s college stuff. Besides, S2 has allotted 2 days before Move-In day to shop & pack. Who needs more than that? ;)</p>
<p>So much for being an Empty Nester.</p>
<p>Sending my sympathies to sewemma - bless you for taking care of your niece & mother. Remember to take care of yourself. </p>
<p>{Hugs} to austinmtmom & her mother - I second alicew about waiting being the worst part. Believe it or not, it gets better once you know what you’re dealing with & have a course of action.</p>
<p>parent56 - I loved the wedding video, especially the fireworks. Thanks for sharing!</p>
<p>Thanks for the morning laugh with Curmudgeon’s story - I just spit coffee all over my computer!</p>
<p>Laundry? What is this laundry thing of which you speak? S2 has carpeted his room with clothing. Who knows what is dirty & clean? I just spray Febreze & close the door. The girls will tell him when he smells bad. He has a deal to reciprocate with the girls: he is supposed to tell them when they have gained the Freshman-15. Sounds like a loaded deal to me.</p>
<p>welcome 12rmh18! and congrats to your sons!! from the sounds of things (laundry, shopping etc) you and sons will fit right in LOL</p>
<p>i’m assuming son knows how to do laundry…afterall has done it at boarding school for 3 years…but then again??? when he came home, mounds of clothes for me to wash arrived in garbage bags. oh yeah, laundry hamper= another thing he didnt know how to use.</p>
<p>tango, there is a BB&B near Yale, but you do need a car to get there. On the other hand, you can buy all his supplies online and have them shipped UPS (Yale should have an address for that, as UPS doesn’t go to PO boxes). During ‘Camp Yale’, as the days before classes start are known, the UPS trucks sit near Phelps Gate (the entrance to Old Campus, where most of the frosh live), and kids can easily pick up their boxes there. </p>
<p>Let me know if you have any more Yale questions - my D had an amazing four years there. :)</p>
<p>Also welcoming you 12rmh18! I agree with parent56…sounds like you fit right in! Congrats to both your S’s and so nice to have you officially join us. And thanks for the smiles. :)</p>
<p>Parent56 - thanks for the hugs. At this point I’ll take all I can get. ;-)</p>
<p>MomLive - I’ve spoken with a couple of moms who are going through the same thing. Rationally, I know that it is nature taking its course and that this behavior is very normal. Yes, he is very ready - yet a couple of weeks ago he told me that while he’s excited, he is also nervous. He went to summer camp for 5/6 years for 7 weeks at a time. He loved it. He will love college. I just wish our last few weeks could be more peaceful. We lost a very dear family member less than 3 months ago, so between mourning her and the fouling of the nest at home, ya can’t look at me crossed-eyed or I’ll start tearing up immediately. </p>
<p>I have to laugh at the laundry stories. Unfortunately, hubby has been working PT (not by choice) for over a year and as a result, has been home a lot. For months, I was doing all the household stuff - laundry, food shopping, food preparing, food cooking (3 steps there!), trying to keep the house fairly clean, keeping track of toilet tissue - you get the drift. This was all in addition to working in real estate sales which, as you all know, isn’t as “easy” as it used to be. Not that it was easy then, but you get my point.</p>
<p>Anyway, one day I blew up and demanded to know why I was still worrying about keeping track of toilet paper and blah, blah, blah when there was a perfectly able bodied person (that would be DH) who could do all this stuff. This was after a few months of waiting to see if he would volunteer to do anything. That was my mistake in the first place. So, that’s what he does now. I’d be happy to take them over again once he gets a FT job. </p>
<p>One of the issues I brought up was the laundry and everyone does laundry now. That machine is going nearly every day.</p>
<p>12rmh18 - Son is a lifeguard too! Got his certification at camp a few summers ago and has been doing it every summer since. </p>
<p>I tell everyone that lifeguard certification is a great thing to have as an older teen/young adult - you’re virtually guaranteed a summer job and the pay is better than being a camp counselor.</p>
<p>Pengo, I went through the attitude when son was a boarding school freshman, to this day I get much more attitude then my husband. It drives me nuts! S always apologizes I just would like to skip the nonsense to begin with! My husband claims it is because son and I have “such a close relationship” I always say if you mean by close enough I can get my hands around his throat and throttle him then I’ll take it!</p>
<p>Sorry for taking so long to post. I was in a doughnut coma. Thanks, ks!</p>
<p>Welcome, 12 and any other newbies.</p>
<p>Last night, one of ds’s longtime Scout buddies finally had his Eagle ceremony. A stat that’s often quoted at these things is that of 100 boys who start Scouts, only two will make Eagle. Well, in ds’s little wolf den of eight, three of them made Eagle, and they were there last night. Ds went to a different HS than the other two, so he doesn’t get to see them often at this point, now that they’re all 18 and aged out of Scouts, but it was really heart-warming last night to take pics of the three and hear the adults speak to how their patrol was always so strong and dependable and to remember this other “family” that has supported ds through the years. And, of course, the slide show had pics of ds as a teeny, little cub scout. So cute. Amazingly, I barely cried. Resignation is beginning to replace nostalgia.</p>
<p>And I can relate to the other mothers of sons. That’s all I’ll say.</p>
<p>12rmh18 - Welcome!! You joined a really fun (and supportive) group!! And LOL at the Febreze spraying - too funny.</p>
<p>MomLive and Pengo - {{{HUGS}}} </p>
<p>parent56 - Oh the agony of the “big” auditions. So much stress. Bless you for reminding your S the filmmaker to let people know SOMETHING. Perhaps our kids will cross paths some day in the small world that is acting!</p>
<p>scualum, I have warned her that the photo cube will get tossed around. She refuses to believe it. I would be surprised if her boyfriend doesn’t bring it with him, he and she are VERY attached. Hopefully he will put it in a corner on the back of a shelf where he’ll know its there but it won’t get noticed in the jumble of mess that is a boy’s dorm room. She’s also giving him a 4x6 picture in a plain wood frame, he can put the picture in front of the photo cube to hide it. (Or he can keep it in a drawer.)</p>
<p>Actually, now that she finished it, even S had to admit it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. It has dark/masculine background colors. If a photo cube could be masculine, this one is.</p>
<p>BF and D are VERY attached. It will be interesting to see how long their relationship lasts (1 3/4 years so far). As D’s mom, I have to admit I’m happy they’re going to try to stay together. I don’t know if it will work - it’s not up to me anyway - but I do think it will help D to stay out of some of the craziness that goes on when college first starts. Upperclassmen guys checking out all the freshman girls, all the freshmen kids checking each other out, people trying to make friends and figure each other out… D is strikingly pretty, fairly outgoing, and too trusting. She’s also much happier when she’s in a relationship. If she went to college single, I’m afraid she’d be too quick to give her trust and maybe her heart to someone who might not deserve them. But since she already has a boyfriend, she can go to college looking to make FRIENDS, and stay out of the hook-up & relationship craziness, for a while at least. If she and BF do break up, hopefully she will have been at her school long enough to figure out which guys are truly good guys and which ones aren’t worth the trouble.</p>
<p>son took a photocube from his gf to boarding school… never made it back (and they broke up) so, i think scualum is probably right… but it is the thought that counts and it sounds very nice</p>
<p>Good Morning. Welcome to the new posters and de-lurkers </p>
<p>I can’t bring myself to count how many days until S’s move-in day. I did make hotel reservations a few days ago, though. Last night, S checked his school portal and found out his schedule was posted for the first term. He told me he was scheduled for a 7:15 A.M. stats class and then has an evening class until 10 on Tues. Welcome to college, lilson! He meets with his advisor in a couple of weeks so maybe he can reschedule one of them. </p>
<p>Summer jobs are hard to come by here so he’s hoping he’ll get to fill in when other college students leave in August. S doesn’t leave until mid Sept. He’s also instructing a section of his HS band as well as writing their parts for the fall show. Having been on the band board I am aware that these positions were paid a stipend. Nothing had been offered to my S so I just had to call the board pres. Maybe I overstepped my boundaries but I feel they can pay him something and still save money. She knows S very well and said she’d bring it up at the meeting next week. He’s a “starving” college student now :)</p>
<p>I agree there are other boards here that are a little intense. I needed a break from the intensity - I have a D class of '12 and can’t keep up with the “testing” and AP talk. D has a type A personality as it is and needs very little hand holding. S was the opposite in high school. Still, I’ve learned so much from them and can’t help but lurk occasionally!</p>
<p>Interesting to read of all the “fouling the nest.” D has been, if anything, even more considerate than normal this summer. She knows she’s going far away and I’m going to miss her. She seems to be going out of her way to do things together with me, to be cooperative, and even to ask permission to go places instead of just announcing that she’s going. She even decided not to go with her BF’s family to their house at the Cape this weekend. Of course, it helps that she is on the “outs” with most of her girlfriends from hs, so her social choices are pretty much limited to her BF, his friends, and us (me, H and S). This week she did have a mini “Art-Class Reunion,” where she and 3 friends from AP Studio Art (2 girls, 1 boy) spent an evening at an art museum. Next week she’s going to dinner with some girls from the area who will be going to her college. But we’re spending a lot of time together, and it’s really nice.</p>
<p>YDS, my S was also an Eagle. It was really nice to hear from other parents in the troop how much they valued his leadership, and how helpful he had been to the younger scouts. I clearly remember my kids looking up to older kids, and it was pleasantly surprising to realize that they had become the ones being looked-up-to!</p>
<p>I wonder how much us parents do our part in “fouling the nest” for our kids. Yesterday, I asked S to fix something in our backyard. I found myself wanting to check on his work and look for mistakes but I actually stopped myself and kept quiet.</p>
<p>DB- Don’t be I have an open ironing board in the laundry room at all times…
I was raised by two wonderful French Grand-mothers…It is a sickness :)</p>
<p>RE: Febreze, S2 kept a bottle in the Bionic Pickup truck. Going through the cab was like going on an archeological expedition: there was the Dirty Soccer Gear Layer which was scattered with the Fast Food Wrapper Layer. At the bottom was the Smelly Underwear/Sweatshirt Layer. Despite fouling the nest, I guess I will miss S2 a teensy bit when he goes away to college, but only because he provides us with such great stories. </p>
<p>YDS: congrats to the Eagles. Both S1 & S2 made Eagle. As an alum, S1 recently took our neighbor’s son to his first troop meeting. He also wrote the ceremony & was the emcee for S2’s court of honor. I have photos of their great -grandfather (1930s), grandfather (mid-1940s), father (1960s), and uncle (1970s) as Boy Scouts. It made for a cool collage of “Scouting through the Years.”</p>
<p>Stole this link from another thread, it’s about freshmen dealing with roommates. Kids aren’t used to face-to-face confrontation/discussion any more, they rely on texting/Facebook, and parents are staying too tied to their kids with cellphones and interfering in issues that kids need to be sorting out for themselves:</p>
<p>^I saw that. Son’s school makes all roommates sit down on the first day and write out a contract on the ‘rules’ for their dorm room. For example, is it okay for one roommate to have a member of the opposite sex sleep over, or hold parties or play video games all night? Hoping that is going to squash some of the issues that tend to arise. Son is rooming with a good friend from HS and he swears that they won’t have any issues…little does he know it’s a whole different ballgame when you are sharing a 12 x 16 foot room with someone.</p>
</p>
That machine is going nearly every day.</p>
I’m impressed.</p>