"Jeans" is a dirty word.

On Saturday, my mom went back to Las Vegas. While she's gone, she left her cold behind. On Sunday, Colin went from a blissfully sweet baby boy to a total fuss-budget. He fussed and squirmed his way through Sunday and Sunday night, and, on Monday, when I ought to have been dropping him at a friend's house (our nanny was out of town), I decided to call in and work from home. If Colin was that fussy for me, there's no way he'd be keen on being at a strange house with someone that he's only met 15 times.*

* Colin is a like a short-term amnesia patient. He's "met" Jenn 15 times, every Sunday of his life. But his memory is so short that every Sunday is like meeting her for the first time.

Colin ended up doing better for most of the day. Until Monday night. He fell asleep on the couch next to me, so I picked him up and plunked him in bed. Usually, mid-sleep, he'll wake up, squirm, stretch, grunt, and go back to sleep. After twenty minutes or so, he woke up, squirmed, stretched, grunted, and then began to cry. And cry. And cry some more. He might have doubled his lifetime crying total in one night.** He was nearly hysterical for about 15 minutes, and I was totally befuddled. It wasn't his hungry cry, not his diaper cry, not his gassy cry, nothing. It was a new brand of hysterical crying. As a last ditch effort, I laid him down on the changing table to see if it was his diaper. As soon as I took off his jeans, he stopped crying. Like, the instant the jeans slipped off his legs, he stopped. Not only stopped crying, but started smiling. All that fuss over sleeping in jeans? Brad said that any kid would fuss over sleeping in jeans, but he fell asleep in them, so how bad could they be? And stayed asleep for a while before he decided they were (apparently) crazy uncomfortable. I have decided that it wasn't the discomfort, but the color. Colin's an observant kid, and I think he decided that he doesn't like the lighter rinse jeans. "It's 2008!" he's screaming at me. "Get me some dark rinse jeans!"

** Colin, being the easy kid he is, had probably only cried for two hours total prior to this incident. So, sure, I exaggerated a bit, but not by much.

Trying to see the silver lining in all this, I decided that we must be good parents because I have never heard Colin cry like that over his honest necessities - he's never been so deliriously hungry that he cried like that. He's never been so soaking wet that his diaper doubled his body weight. So, for Colin, the only thing worth truly crying over is jeans. His life must be pretty good.