6 Totally gross places my baby loves to put his hands

We've officially reached the stage where I'm constantly chasing my son around to make sure he's not getting into anything dangerous, dirty or otherwise off-limits. For the better part of each day it's me against him, and with work, household duties and such there's no way I can have my eyes on him at all times. Plus, that little bugger is FAST. So, yes, I have already found him knee deep in crud a few times. However, there are some gross things he just can't seem to keep his hands off, no matter how often I scold him. Here are his six favorite less-than-sanitary things to get into:

Noses. If Abel is within a few inches of your face, you better believe you're going to end up with a pudgy little finger lodged in your nostril. For some reason these tiny orifices are super-attractive to my tot. It's kind of funny, but at the same time, I can't even imagine all the germs he's coming in contact with and then proceeding to spread all over every low-lying surface in our apartment.

The toilet. Thankfully he usually just tries to lift the seat up and flush it, but I've caught him with his hand in the bowl at least a couple of times. It's disgusting and pretty mortifying every time I see it, but I just can't bring myself to install one of those pesky latches. 

Between the legs. My son abhors diaper changes these days, and if he's not trying to wiggle or squirm away, his hand is likely making its way down to the diaper area. I'm pretty sure he's either trying to stop me from taking his diaper all the way off or trying to keep me from putting a fresh one on, but of course he doesn't realize that he still has poop smeared all over his butt when he's doing it.

The garbage can. My little guy is on the tall side and has been able to reach high enough to lift the garbage can lid in our kitchen for some time now. Nearly every night while I'm preparing dinner I look down to see him attempting to pull food scraps out of it. The worst part is, he has no clue this food is no longer edible. I always catch him before anything makes it into his mouth, but ewww.

Dog bowls. We try to remember to pick the dogs' food bowls up immediately after they finish eating, but sometimes this little task slips through the cracks and I find my little guy rubbing his hands all over the dog-spit coated insides of the bowls, which totally skeeves me out. I mean dog breath stinks and any dog owner knows that canines love to find decrepit things to munch on whenever they are outside for a walk. Yuck!

Old milk jugs. Abel likes to roll empty milk and juice jugs around the tile floor in the kitchen, and for the most part this doesn't bother me at all — it's actually pretty cute and it entertains him for awhile. However, he recently managed to get the lid off of one of the milk jugs and I subsequently witnessed him mouthing the opening where there was undoubtedly a film of sour milk. I guess I better start rinsing them out before I let him play with them.

Image via Thinkstock