The more kids I have, the worse of a mom I become.

Here’s the photographic evidence.

My youngest son, chewing on a stick. That has NOT been cleaned. Or sanitized. And was picked up in a PUBLIC park.

And what do I do when I find him sucking on a broken tree bit? Snap a picture, of course.

And yes, that’s grass on his face. His first course.

What am I thinking, letting him eat sticks? “Oh good—his first fiber.”

Only later when a college student walks by and glares at me for my gross negligence do I think, “Hmm. Is there something wrong with letting my 7-month-old eat sticks?”

Maybe there is.

I’m not exactly a disinfectant queen of a mother. When I see moms at the grocery store using those antibacterial wipes to clean the shopping cart handles, I think, “Good idea. I think my son may have been gumming that one.”

Then I realize they’re cleaning it off BEFORE their children sit there, not after.

Hmm. Am I doing something wrong?

So I took away the stick and gave him a sucker instead, compliments of the bank. I think the college girl glared at me again.

Child #9 knows the tastes of suckers (see, I'm even teaching older sister how to administer candy), Nerds, Smarties, Sprite, root beer, Kool-aid and even Dr. Pepper. (No, I don’t fill his bottle up with those! He just tastes them!)

(Besides, he can’t figure out how to use a bottle.)

Now I do have my limits. Although all babies seem to be part Labrador retriever, I do stop them from playing in the toilets. I don’t even take pictures first. And if they happen to get to the toilet brush, I plop them in a tub and read the warnings on all of the disinfectant bottles to see if any can be used on flesh. (Neither of them can. Yeah, I own only two such kinds of cleaners.)

But I let my babies crawl on the floor, and if they find a cheerio from breakfast still on the floor at lunch, I might just let them eat it.

I call it “Building Immunities.” I figure kids generations ago crawled through much worse, especially if they lived on a farm, or an industrial city, or in the country or . . . just about anywhere, I suppose. And they lived. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

I later checked my photo albums to see if I was this lax with my other children, imagining that I was much more vigilant 21 years ago when I first became a mom. But what I found were photos of other babies crawling through the dirt. Another little boy chewing a Ken-doll head. Children covered in mud. Little girls running around outside naked. 

In the dark. 

In winter. (You understand why I didn't post those, right? Social Services already has enough evidence.)

And then my first-born. There she was, just six months old, and I had let her get chicken pox. In my defense, I had the chicken pox too, caught when I substitute taught a kindergarten class. The next photo shows her destroying a newspaper. I remember having to wash all the newsprint off of her hands and face. And legs. Tummy. Feet. Ears . . .

But she survived. So have the others, so far, with no major problems (that we can see).

"Yeah . . . right, Mom. Building Immunities. We'll see what my therapist says about that in 20 years."