Bellybuttons

We woke up earlier than usual to get ready to go to the Red Sea this morning. I don’t know if you know, but Andrew is not a morning person, and while I used to be a morning person, that’s kind of changed since I got married to a night owl. And now that I’m pregnant, I’m doubly not a morning person.

Getting up at 7:30 AM might sound like sleeping in to you, but for us it was torture. At least this morning. (Remember that we’re blessed to have Rachel, who thinks sleep is optional and thinks any hour is a great hour to be awake, from 4 AM to 4 AM, so it’s not like we never get up before 7:30, we just haven’t really had to for most of the summer).

Anyway, Andrew was in the bathroom in front of the mirror and he caught sight of his bellybutton. I don’t know how; maybe he was scratching his stomach and lifted up his shirt to do so as males are prone to do.

“What?!” he panicked, “There’s a hole in my stomach!”

He quickly went to find the hole, only to discover his bellybutton.

I don’t know if he thought I had sold his kidneys on the black market, or what…maybe he was just still in dreamland.

Later today he had a second bellybutton scare, which makes the first story all the more hilarious. While I was napping, Andrew and Rachel made dinner. To keep Rachel content, Andrew gave her some chocolate chips that we inherited from the Lewises (thanks, guys!), as he often does while he’s cooking dinner.

She sat there, happily eating her chocolate chips and not bothering Andrew about getting to help stir or cut…or asking him what he’s doing every time he breathes.

And then he looked over at her. Her bellybutton was oozing a thick, dark, tar-colored substance. He flipped out, ran over to her, and began examining her bellybutton.

“Wait a minute,” he said, allowing his heart rate to return to normal, “Did you stick a chocolate chip in your bellybutton?”

All Rachel said in response was, “Ha, ha, ha! Silly Rachel!”

She had, indeed, managed to melt a chocolate chip in her bellybutton, scaring her poor father half to death.

I don’t know what his current fixation on bellybuttons is. Maybe it is simply carry over from his fear of baby bellybuttons. You have no idea how happy he was to not be the one changing Rachel’s diaper when her bellybutton stub fell off…and now that we’re having another baby he’s facing that risk again! No wonder he’s panicky.

And lest you wonder if Andrew is the only loopy one in the morning, he's not. I walked by the bathroom while Rachel was sitting on the potty and this is what she said,

"Hi, Mommy! I'm wearing my toes today!"

The she did some gas. "Ooh, gas! I like gas. I want cereal. Go beach now?"

She wasn't sure the whole morning if we were ever going to go because we were dressed up in church clothes. She kept asking about that every 2 minutes, just to make sure we weren't duping her out. Still, her train of thought was all over the place.