Is it normal to play the character selection/creation part of the game over and over?

It’s perfectly normal. I believe many people who play The Sims series also do the same thing (albeit, in a more detailed way). I just hope there’s an incentive for you doing that. After you’ve created the character with your preferred statistics then what? They’re supposed to be used so that such statistics can be utilized.

The players in my house do it all the time, and talk, talk, talk about their creations.

Of course.
Everyone likes to play with dress-up with dolls.

I don’t do video games. But I play DnD and I enjoy the character creation part of it.