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If it wasn't for my kids

Today, I went with my daughter on a 5th grade fieldtrip to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Up until this point, if you’d ask me how it was that I’ve lived in the D.C. Metro area for about two and a half years and yet I’ve never gone to one of the most amazing sources of the performing arts and an important landmark in the area, I would have pointed vaguely to my two kids: Who can afford the price of the tickets combined with a babysitter?! I would have said. Ironically, it’s now because of one of them that I got to see the inside of the place. Truth told, many of the places I’ve seen in the D.C. area are in some way related to my kids, from other fieldtrips to visits motivated by the idea of making sure my kids get to see all they can while we’re living here.

And that got me thinking of some other things I never would have experienced if it wasn’t for my kids, like:

—watching a CAT scan up close. Twice. Once for each kid. One for each concussion.

—realizing that slamming your finger in a car door is scarily akin to labor pains. I’m not kidding. I had physical flashbacks. Shudder.

—discovering dust bunnies and totoros exist and falling in love with My Neighbor Totoro, which is now one of my favorite movies of all time.

—how scary it is to watch someone faint with their eyes wide open. My daughter does that. My mom tells me I do too. Payback, I guess.

—hearing giggles that make you finally experience what it means to have your heart explode with joy.

—being on the other side of “I told you so.”

—being on the other side of the birds-n-bees conversation.

—being on the other side of a lot things, actually.

—finding out that teeth can get clean knocked out. Really, not a drop of blood on ‘em.

—hugs that melt all the worry and fear out of the world.

—the horrible realization that kids really do pay more attention to what I do than what I say.

—a love so fierce and deep that it actually hurts.

—finally getting how much my parents love me—and a better grasp on how much God loves us all.

(Image: mine)