My son is in his fourth full day by himself down at college.  This is his second day of classes.  He has no a/c and is on the third floor.  We have been have heat warnings since his second day there.  I have been praying that the weather cools down and we get some relief to wash out the pollen from the air.

From the pictures on Facebook, it looks like he is getting involved in activities there.  We are happy to see that as he has been more of a shy kid in school and not having a lot of friends.  A was never in sports or other school activities.  He did however participate in children outings with our church.  It didn't help either that my husband's family has anxiety and has problems with social gatherings.  Nor that my husband and A have never gotten along.  My husband's expectations and standards have always been higher for him than our oldest.  Sometimes higher than for our youngest.  A is the middle and the only boy in our family.  I believe many times he has felt out of place.  I had one brother who was older.  My husband was the middle with a brother on both ends.  To me, my husband should have understood what it was like to be in the middle, but didn't.  W (my husband) is a high achiever when it came to school.  He knew that that would get him a higher paying job than what his dad had.  W wanted a better life for himself as an adult then he had growing up.  My son is not book smart but street smart.  M is book smart and K is both.  I am street smart.  W is a black and white person.  He doesn't understand why people aren't a certain way.  He struggles to accept them the way they are and not how he things they should be.  I am seeing my husband softening with A and missing him.

I hope A is giving this college a real hard go a getting better grades.  I hope he really tries to apply himself more.  He always has and has always wanted to get the A's and B's like his older sister.  The grading period starts out like that, but then by the end his final grades came down.

I am missing him myself.  He was the one I could talk to.  Though I can talk to K very easily also.  Sometimes it feels like he won't be back.  I think it is like this because he was home for two years after high school.  I thought at first he would be home sick, and now it seems like he doesn't even want to communicate with us.  He was excited to go but also very nervous.  I hope he still wants to come back home and visit and communicate with us.  In the past three years, I have had three surgeries.  Out of all three children, he helped me the most.  K was next.  A did so much around the house.  He even wanted to be in the choosing of picking out another horse whenever we were going to do that.  I just sat there with a smile on my face watching A and K looking at the internet.

I know he is happy but will also grow up and mature there.  In the mean time, I will be focusing on K and her senior of high school.