help, vomitting

[Beauty4Ashes]

Dh says that it's because the boys play outside in the dirt and put dirty stuff in their mouths or put their dirty hands in their mouths. Is there anything I can do about this? I hate dealing with diarrhea and vomitting. Ds2 had it in February, April, and then again this Sunday in May. Ds1 always gets it after him. AMOF, ds1 just threw up all over himself in the car this evening. It worries me because my sons don't have a lot of extra weight to be losing, and they typically don't eat well for a day or two after throwing up. Please help, I can handle upper respiratory bugs, but stomach bugs are the pits. With the way that our sons put stuff in their mouths, this could be a really rough long summer.

[4MKfam]

I wish I knew the answer, because dd#1 gets that every (EVERY!) time it comes around. I had theorized it was because she a)doesn't eat as healthy as her siblings do --she's a pickier eater, so even though we have almost no junk food in the house, she still shuns veggies, fruits, and meat, and/or b) she's a thumbsucker :shrug. Some years do seem to be worse than others. Last year in AZ, we had ONE stomach bug all winter. This year, after moving back here to WI (where they have Winter :rolleyes) Elanor's had the bug about five (no kidding!) times since October, twice passing it on to her siblings. I am soooo sick of it.
I don't know what to do either, outside of completely forbidding her to suck her thumb (we're working on setting some boundaries --it's a comfort mechanism for her, so we know forbidding it outright would only backfire) and washing hands obsessively (now that I maybe should encourage a bit more... :lol).

[Beauty4Ashes]

Mine eat pretty healthy stuff, though when it starts getting warm outside and the a/c hasn't been turned on so the house is like an oven, they don't eat as much. They don't suck their thumbs, though ds2 has started biting his finger nails. All winter someone was sick, I really don't want it to continue for the entire spring/summer. Probably I should be a more obsessive hand washer. I tend to keep tea tree oil with me to clean up owies outside and a clean cloth. Maybe I should keep some water for hand washing purposes as well?