You can’t keep your kid in a bubble, nor should you. Your baby is only going to grow an immune system, learn to socialize and have fun if they are exposed to other children.
Having said that, nobody wants to spend their free time wiping their baby’s nose either.
This weekend, we took Lil G-Man to the Lego Brickworld Fan Expo in Novi Michigan.
He had a blast playing in a pit of baby friendly Duplo Lego blocks,with quite a few other babies and toddlers. As is the case with any group of young children, many of the Duplos were being tasted by the children because that is simply what young kids do.
Why? Who knows. Maybe they were wondering if different colored blocks tasted better than others. All I cared about was letting my little sidekick have fun with the glistening slobber covered plastic blocks while protecting him as best as possible.
The simple answer is pacifier (he loves the Tommy Teepees).
Were his hands a petri dish of germs and nastiness by the time he was done? Absolutely more than I’d like to think about. I’m sure they could have used in a high school science class to teach kids about communal diseases.
But thanks to the pacifier he was unable to put the spit covered blocks or his chubby little germ covered digits in his mouth.
When we picked him up, we simply wiped him down with some baby wipes from our Storksak diaper bag.
Does it keep him as safe as quarantining him in a bubble? Nope. But I would rather he experience things in life than watch other kids experience them.
Now that he is close to 12 months, I do want to start weening him off the pacifier. I don’t want him to walk up to me one day, pop out his pacifier and ask to borrow the car keys, but until he is old enough to understand “Don’t put that in your mouth”, this works.
I don’t want him going through life wrapped in proverbial (or actual) bubble wrap. I want him to experience being a kid and have fun, but I also don’t want him crawling around town putting every nasty little thing within arms reach in his mouth either.
Geeky Daddy 