Navel Gazing

My daughter is very observant. She's always looking around at what is different, new or moving around. She is obsessed with my dogs, which makes complete sense because I am too. However the thing that interests her most lately is her belly button and everyone else's too.

I'm not sure when the fanaticism started but almost every day when I get home from work, she pulls up my shirt to make sure that my belly button is there. She then shows me hers. Whenever she wakes up and after she's had breakfast, she checks to make sure that her belly button hasn't gone away overnight. It's very cute.

Before she goes to bed, and usually while I'm reading her bedtime stories, she decides it's a good time to stick her finger right into my umbilical area. She often compares her tummy to mine and I always tell her "Yours is much cuter!"

A week ago, one of the dogs presented us her tummy. My daughter proceeded to inspect the dogs tummy. She then pulled up her shirt to look at her belly button. She returned her gaze to the puppy's tummy and back again to hers. I realized what was going on and said "Honey, I don't think dogs have belly buttons." I am not entirely sure how I didn't eat my own child but I guess I have a lot of restraint.

She even pursues this tenacity with the rest of the family. I've caught my daughter pulling up my mom's shirt in search of her belly button. Whenever she finds it, she pokes her index finger into my mom's stomach. My mom thinks it's cute but always asks me where she learned this behavior. Not sure I can provide any light there as I am equally mystified by daughter's interest.

She once caught my sister's back slightly exposed and she bent down to search for said tummy trinket. She kept pressing her finger into my sister's back until I realized what she was up to and told her "What your looking for is in the front of your aunt, not in the back." She did stop after I said that. I don't think it's because she understood what I was saying but more because she realized that she was not similar to my sister at that moment.

It's really very cute to watch her in this phase where everything is new and interesting.The only thing I have to remember is to trim her nails because getting poked in the stomach with talons hurts!