god made dirt, so dirt don't hurt.

Yesterady we took Owen to the Tech/Baylor football game. The weather was amazing and he is still small enough that we don't have to buy a ticket. One of my favorite old friends was in TX and just a row behind us...which meant I spent most of the game catching up with her.......and ignoring the game ( come on it was baylor)...and my son. Owen was entertaining himself nicely feeding his dinosaur crackers, drinking all my "juice" (soda he shouldn't have) and throwing the nerf football we packed at some unsuspecting neighbors. After several quarters of entertaining himself, the sun started to get to him and he laid down on the concrete riser. This was gross I know, but I let him. He got a little dirty, he ate some popcorn off the ground ( i did try to stop that)and seriously eyed some chewed up gum stuck to the bottom of a bleacher. The two cute women in front of me kept looking me back and giving me dirty looks. He was not disrupting them in any way, they were just shocked that I was allowing him to lay on the ground like that. The looks were far nastier than any germ my son was picking up off the ground.
The cover story for this week's Newsweek is about the drastic rise in food allergies. I am not allowed to send Owen to school with anything that was even near a peanut becuase someone in his class has a severe allergry. The throat closing up kind. Now, when you introduce new foods to a baby you are supposed to do them one at a time for an entire week. I tried. I did cereal and sweet potatoes and carrots and squash according to the rules. Then I quit and fed him whatever. He didn't quite make it to his first birthday before his first peanut butter sandwhich ( they tell you to wait until they are 2 now). His face did turn all red and blotchy once after eating cinnamon apple oatmeal. I called the dr. panicked on a Saturday morning -- afraid his throat would swell shut next and that we would need to rush him to the ER. Turns out the cinamon just irritated his skin. No allergy, just an irritant. Now, I am not saying allergies are nonsense. I get 2 allergy shots every week and am miserable if I don't. Owen gets an almost daily dose of Claritin ( right after we give him his inhaler). Allergies are real and a total pain in the ass. Newsweek went so far as to say this giant rise in food allergies, particualry the extreme allergies are due to being too clean. We don't let them eat something that fell on the floor. We wash off the pacifier before popping back in their mouth ( or atleast we feel like we should). We wipe them down with Purell after they play in the mall toddler play area. We cover their shopping cart seats, and high chairs. The theory is that our immune system is bored. It isn't fighting off all the usual suspects because all the antibacterial soaps are doing it for them. Every fever or runny nose is treated with antibiotics even if it isn't bacterial. Our immune system doesn't know what to do so it starts attacking perfectly harmless things like peanuts or eggs.
Ask any teenager why they did something stupid. If you get any answer out of them at all, it will most likely be something along the lines of "I don't know, I was bored.....I guess" Bored is bad. Nothing is more dangerous than if we become complacent with our relationship with God. If we let that get boring -- we are guarenteed attack on things that were seemingly harmless before.
To be honest my son gets sick a lot. We have been to the ER, we have called poison control, me and Shaun have played rock paper scissors to see who has to stay home with him. I have been puked on twice in the last week alone. Maybe I should be breaking out the antibacterial wipes a little more often, but I am not. I want my son to be strong and ready for the world. He is going to get dirty, he might even get sick, but I pray that he is never bored with who God is. I pray that his little immune system and his heart will be ready when the real culprits appear. Until then, bring on the mud pies.