It's Nakey Time!

My kids hate clothes. That’s why the majority of toddler-age pictures of my younger three children show them in various stages of undress. Not for my flock is that on-demand baby trick of pulling up your shirt or dress to show your adorable belly button--no need to pull up what’s never there. They were, and one still is, just a consistently half-naked bunch of hooligans freed from the bonds of restrictive clothing. I once heard a woman at a child’s birthday party sniff condescendingly, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Connor wear shoes.” She was a bit of a patronizing beezy, but she did speak the truth. I believe shoe-wearing is Darwinian--I provide the shoes and the technique for donning them, the kid does the donning…or has to stay quiet about the cold feet. There’s something liberating about bucking social convention, albeit vicariously through my little streakers, but most family photos look like a scene from Swiss Family Robinson. I once saw an amazing documentary on Jane Goodall that showed her son spending his childhood cavorting with the chimps in nothing but his birthday suit, and I remember thinking that my kids are proof you don’t have to be a famous naturalist to have kids who are most comfortable in the nude. In Karen Katz’s Where Is Baby’s Belly Button?, we get to spend some fun time lifting the flaps to see adorable baby feet, hands, and yes, belly buttons. It’s pretty cute, but the babies all seem strangely overdressed.











http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Karen-Katz/1706521


http://www.amazon.com/Where-Babys-Belly-Button-Karen/dp/0689835604