Motherhood FAIL of the Week: Baby, it's Cold Inside

I'm baaaaaaack!  I am finally on the mend and aside from a persistent cough, I look and sound much more like my old self.  I'm proud to report that the first thing I did after emerging from my sick bed was to make a HUGE batch of latkes, so I'm pretty sure that I win the Jewess of the Year award.  I can't tell you how happy I am to be back in the land of the living, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate my health than to regale you with a fresh tale of my Motherhood shortcomings.  It's been a few weeks since I confessed to one of my failures (what with the whole Holiday Gift Guide and all) so I'm sure you're waiting with baited breath to either feel superior or possibly call Child Protective Services.  Here's hoping it's the former.

We're finally getting some cooler weather here in the City of Angels.  Apparently the temperatures have been downright frigid, as I've seen a number of folks walking around wearing down jackets, knit caps and gloves in the middle of the afternoon.  I don't personally find a high of 60 degrees to warrant heavy-duty winter wear, but I'm not a native Angeleno, so I guess my blood is thicker.  I will admit that it does get a bit chilly at night, and since we live in an old duplex that doesn't seem to have insulation or windows from the current century, it gets pretty cold in our house.  We have central heat, but the lack of insulation and the wind-tunnel windows pretty much negate the intermittent hot air that blasts out of the vents.  Unfortunately, the Muffin Man's room is the coldest in the house.  I'm not particularly sure why, but I have a feeling it's the specific confluence of there being three windows and a heating vent tucked into the corner of the room, but whatever the case his room often feels like an igloo.  I always dress him for bed in a fleece onesie with socks and an undershirt underneath, but in the morning my kiddo's little hands are like ice cubes.

Last week we had some lovely warm weather during the afternoon, so I opened two of the windows in Noah's room to get some fresh air.  I have to say that one of the things I really do love about living in Los Angeles is that I can have the windows open during the winter.  I detest stale, over-heated air, and I used to run around my New York apartments opening and closing windows in the dead of winter trying to get some "fresh" air while attempting not to freeze to death.  Anyway, I guess the weather was warm enough last week that I left the windows open behind the blackout shades while Noah napped.  Apparently I did not put up the shades after he woke up from his nap, and I didn't bother to check to see that the windows were closed before I put the kiddo to bed that night, because it turns out that I left his windows open all night long, allowing cold air to rush through his room with abandon.  Thank goodness that we do, in fact, live in a temperate climate, because if I had succeeded in convincing the Hubby to relocate to the East Coast I would have had a child-icicle on my hands.  I mean, honestly, what kind of Mother doesn't check to make sure the windows are closed in the nursery before putting her son to bed?!  This kind, apparently.  Amazingly, Noah slept through the night without incident, and so far he hasn't come down with any sort of cold, so I guess he wasn't harmed in any way (other than psychologically).

When I discovered the following morning that I had left the windows open all night, I was appropriately horrified.  You'll be happy to know that I now make it a point to always check to make sure the windows are closed before putting the Muffin Man to bed, and we now have a lovely space heater that keeps his room toasty warm all night long (before you comment or send me hate mail about the dangers of this please know that it is a ceramic heater that shuts off at a specific temperature and it's not near any curtains and blah, blah, blah).  Now if only I could find some sort of "Bad Mother" gadget with an alarm that goes off whenever I'm in danger of making a terrible mothering mistake, we'd really be in business.