Off to college

I suppose you could argue the whole point of being a parent is to care for your children and teach them, so they can launch into the world successfully. Who thought that was a good idea?!  

We spent the last couple of months working through the processes required by James Madison University, and doing other prep work to gather all the stuff Reed would need at school. We tried to let him do all the work without reminders, but I had a hard time stopping with the reminders – a years' long habit can't stop that easily. Reed wasn't too interested in the "stuff" he'd need for school. He worked with me to choose a small bit of stuff, but then was happy to just let me gather the rest of the things I thought he needed. It will be interesting to see what stuff returns home at the end of the school year, unopened or unused. Some things he didn't want to take, but I packed them anyway – like a deck of cards, Skip-Bo and Uno, as well as Cards Against Humanity. He wanted to take as few clothes as possible....I mostly let him do that, since he'll be the one to deal with the consequences of only having seven pairs of socks. Laundry's gonna have to happen like clockwork, or there will be some stinky feet. LOL

We dropped Reed off at JMU this past Saturday. Most of his friends had already left for school, and I think he was ready to go. He's always quiet so I can't be totally sure he wasn't anxious, but he seemed okay with it all. He had a randomly assigned roommate, who'd already moved in and was there to greet us and then leave us to unload and set up. He didn't bring a ton of stuff, so it didn't take too long. 

Then we realized we needed a crate or something to store his snacks in, plus I'd bought conditioner not shampoo, so he let us do the Target run to pick those things up. While we were gone, Reed got a head start on getting the lay of the land and orienting himself to the campus. His dorm building, Shorts Hall, is....not great. It was built in 1968 and somehow hasn't been upgraded since then, it's kind of astonishing. And there's no air conditioning. I think it's the kind of thing that will build character and will allow the kids there to have a "back in my day" kind of story – so there is some upside to it! Honestly once these few weeks of hot weather are done, I don't think the kids will have any issues with the dorm. Well, scratch that...the dorm is across the road from the football stadium, where the band practices daily. Eventually I guess that will become background noise that they don't even notice. And it will be super easy to go to the football games!

Reed was ready for us to get out of his hair once we dropped off our Target purchases, so we took one last family picture before we headed out.

Man, was it hard to drive away from there, especially for Tod, coming so close after losing his Dad. So much change for our family in such a short amount of time (and that's not even including the fact that Shelby spent two nights in the doggie hospital while Tod was in South Dakota for his Dad's funeral – we were really scared about that, but she is fine now). 

Did we prepare him well enough? Will he make good friends? Remember to go to class? I guess time will tell. I think he was ready and he will do great. I can't wait to hear all about it, and counting down the days until we see him again at Family Weekend in early October. 

Tonight as I finished making dinner, I reached into the cabinet to get dinner plates out. I realized now I only need three plates. Boy is this hard. With the pandemic going on for so long, I have spent literally almost every single day for the last year and a half with Reed – more time than we've spent together since he was born. It has been a privilege to get that extra time with him (though it would have been very much preferable to have had the kids in school and doing normal stuff all this time). We are really missing him already, it's so strange to not have him here!

It seems like not that long ago that we were sending this little boy off to Kindergarten. 💜💛💜💛