Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig whelenlights.com. NS
Answer
whelenlights.com. 5 NS ns-1084.awsdns-07.org.
whelenlights.com. 5 NS ns-1149.awsdns-15.org.
whelenlights.com. 5 NS ns-1386.awsdns-45.org.
whelenlights.com. 5 NS ns-507.awsdns-63.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0