Temperature Monitor

I think that most moms who read this will be able to relate when I say that you really spend the first three months of your children’s lives just trying to keep them alive! You feed them as much as possible, watch them intently to ensure that they are sleeping, eating, burping, pooping, peeing, smiling, crying, suckling and breathing exactly the way the books, and the advice from your mother, your girlfriends, the internet, your coworkers, the woman down the street who’s name your forget but she-raised-four-kids-so-she-must-know-what-she’s-talking-about, and your neighbor’s concrete contractor say they should be! With our first child The Senator, Mr. X and I literally spent the first three weeks just staring at him until 1 in the morning, and then waking every two hours to “make sure that he’s still breathing”! Those of you who have had two or more children are laughing out loud at our utter stupidity, because you now know as I do that we will NEVER SLEEP AGAIN! With our second child we had much less anxiety and decided that our daughter could be in bed with us. That meant that we slept on the very edges of the mattress with her in the middle and spent the majority of the night concerned that we would roll over and crush her in bed until we finally moved her to a bassinet (This was somehow better than having to get up and nurse in the middle of the night).

With two children, I am constantly at battle with the temperature in our home, convinced that they will freeze to death if it is too cold, or sweat to death if it is too hot. (Are you noticing a death theme here? It is really very morose once I say it out loud!) Our house was built in 1925 and has a floor furnace which nicely heats our dining room while leaving all other rooms at varying degrees of cold, and in the summertime, window air conditioners which cool both the dining room and The Senator’s room to perfection, and leave all other rooms at varying degrees of MISERABLE. I have calculated that I spend, on average, a minimum of 6 minutes each day “managing” the temperature gauge in our home. That loosely calculates to 42 minutes per week, 3.033 hours per month, and 36.4 hours per year adjusting the temperature in my home! Over the course of a lifetime if we are to stay in our current home, I could end up spending over 2000 hours or upwards of 12 weeks monitoring temperature in my home! I think we need to invest in central air!