<p>I’ve loved taking my boys to college. But I know it’s really more for me than for them, and my boys know that.</p>
<p>I’m not much help carrying the boxes but each of my boys have asked me to make up their beds. First son’s college bed was so thin and lumpy that I used a memory foam pad AND a fiberbed pad (like a featherbed pad but hypoallergenic) and a padded mattress pad under the fitted sheet, and now it’s become a family tradition that each son’s dorm bed needs to be made up that way.</p>
<p>I’ve also accepted the fact that once we are in the dorm, the boys are GONE, running around meeting new people,etc. I end up doing a lot of the easy unpacking and putting away and then hunt the son down for a quick kiss. Later on we always get a call for last minute items. If we are lucky, son will have a quick bite with us when we bring over the final items, but we are ready to be shoved out the door and onto the road!</p>
<p>When we moved son#2 into his dorm, a boy was moving into a room across the hall, and we all could hear him mother’s very loud scolding the entire afternoon. He was putting things in the “wrong” places, he wasn’t “paying attention” every time he went into the hallway to meet people, she insisted they go for a family dinner and then to the movies that night (he wanted to do the planned dorm welcome /scavenger hunt activity. My son felt so sorry for him! And told me how much he appreciated me!</p>
We’ll go with S2 because he’s going quite a distance and we want to savor the moments. We will stay in a resort town after we get him settled and start our emptynest days there. We’ll go back by his college on Sunday to find out what he has discovered he still may need and go shopping and to lunch. After that, he’ll be on his own, and we will too. ;(</p>