germaphobe

I'm a germaphobe. Not so bad that I spend hours a day washing my hands or showering to keep clean. Come on, I'm a mom of three, I'm lucky to get 15 minutes a day to clean myself, but I definitely worry about picking up germs from public places, and I'm pretty anal about everyone washing their hands the instant we get home from anywhere, and I frequently change my shirt, if not my entire outfit upon returning from a store or other similar public place. It has gotten worse with each kid I've had. Which sounds silly because most parents get more lax about things the more children they have, but not me. I know that the more people in the house, means the more potential for carrying around germs and spreading illness and that means more sick people for me to take care of, and more chances of me catching said illness and not being able to take care of anything. Plus now when we go to stores the older two like to touch everything. Then I start thinking about how many other people have touched that thing, and where their hands were before they touched that thing. And then there are the people that are really sick, or their kids are sick and they go do whatever anyway and infect everyone else. Seriously if you're sick, stay home. I don't want what you have. See, I'm a germaphobe. Luckily it hasn't reached the point of me not going places ever, but during cold and flu season I am definitely more likely to keep my kids home as much as possible than to drag everyone to the store. I know a lot of people say you should just expose everyone to the germs and let our immune systems build up defenses to things, but I'd rather just keep everyone as healthy as possible. This means there is lots of handwashing going on in our house, and everyone takes their vitamin everyday. I feel kind of bad because I do make the kids wash their hands a lot, and because of it they both have ended up with the driest skin on their hands. Poor Nathan's hands are chapped and peeling and cracking. He was crying the other night because he said washing them hurt. So everynight we've been slathering the kids's hands with lotion and Nathan even sleeps with socks on his to keep the moisture in and help them heal faster. It seems to be working, which makes me happy since I'm not about to let up on the amount of handwashing they do. Germaphobes unite!