L discovered something new this morning: beauty marks. After she spotted one on my shoulder, she tried to remove it and keep it for herself.

This episode followed a morning earlier this week in which L attempted to “clean” my chest of chest hair. That first exchange fascinated me; today’s beauty mark drama nearly prompted me to laugh myself into an asthma attack.

Here’s how it happened. We were playing on the floor in her room, and because it was shortly after we had woken up, I was shirtless. At one point, she crawled over toward me to fetch a toy (actually, it was a measuring cup; she really likes using these as toys). That’s when she looked over at my shoulder and started giggling.

I knew immediately what she was going for, and explained to her what it was. This only fueled her curiosity more.

First, she scratched at it, trying to pry it loose. When that didn’t work, she climbed on me and used her teeth (trust me, this hurt like hell). Finally, she grabbed one of her teething rings and manipulated it like a tool to try and scrape the thing off my shoulder.

Not surprisingly, none of these methods was successful. While I was sitting there laughing hysterically, the baby got so frustrated by her failures that she started crying.

This outburst only lasted until she decided she wanted to untie her bumper from her crib railing for the tenth time of the hour. That poor bumper; I might have chest hair that needs cleaning and a bunch of conspicuous beauty marks, but thank goodness my body doesn’t come with ties.