Dirt Don't Hurt - In Moderation

The never-ending battle to keep my house clean is no joke.  I raise boys – it’s borderline impossible. The walls always need wiped, the floors always need mopped, and the toilets always need scrubbed. Like most moms I know, I try to keep my house free from germs.  But there are many days when I just can’t keep up. Sometimes you just have to let the germs win.

Let’s face it … children are tiny, disgusting, walking, cesspools of microorganisms.

When both of my boys were really small, I worked diligently to keep the germs away.
I never let them eat the dropped goldfish off the stadium bleachers.  We washed our hands like it was an Olympic sport.  And if anybody tried to touch my kid’s binkies or face or ANYthing … I pulled out my martial arts moves quicker than kung fu panda.
Oh, and play dates, yeah … don’t get me started on those.  I had mommy-terminator vision.  I was trained to watch every germy move your child or my child was about to make.

But yet, they still managed to catch every. single. funkness. out there.  I all but wrapped them in bubbles, y’all.

So I gave up...

Every day, I ship them off to school and daycare so I can live a dazzling life of working full-time out of the house. Obviously, they’re going to bring something home with them.  They’re going to lick the wall or the kid next to them (I hope I’ve raised them better than that, but in all honesty, I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one). And then they’re going to bring home that septic tongue in the form of snotty faces expecting a big ol’ slobbery kiss.

Which I then have to pretend to enjoy.

My husband and I share the same view on germs.  Shopping carts, fine.  Ball pits, OH HELL NO!  Do you know how many kids we’ve seen disappear in a ball pit with a slice of pizza only to pop out of there without it? And we know they didn’t eat it. They popped up too quick!

We live on the ‘dirt don’t hurt’ – in moderation theory.  I can’t chase them around all day.  All I ask is that they sang the Happy Birthday song while washing their hands after they used the restroom and also to not eat the gum under their desk. Oh, and to not use the public drinking fountains because that’s just … eww. I can almost SEE all the little buggies squirming their way into my children’s mouths.

I am not ashamed of letting them eat dirt every now and then.  But I’m also not ashamed to make them claustrophobic by following them everywhere and lysoling (yes, that is now a verb) their every move all while chanting, “did you just touch that light switch? Did you??!?? TELL ME NOWWW!”

Laughter is the best medicine.  And payback is a beeeetch, you walking cesspools of microorganisms! You too will have kids someday.