The smell of damp cedar and burnt vanilla cupcakes always reminds me of the Great Encanto Disaster of 2025. Last March 14th, my oldest, Maya, turned 11, and she decided her entire personality was now Mirabel Madrigal. Living in suburban Portland means you spend half your life planning outdoor events that inevitably move into a…
Rain was lashing against the windows of our drafty house in the West Hills of Portland back in April 2024, and I was three cups of coffee deep into a full-blown panic. My middle child, Sophie, was turning five, and she had very specifically requested a “Princess Peach and Mario” bash for 19 of her…
My living room floor on April 12, 2024, looked like a leopard had exploded in a craft store. I sat there, surrounded by 18 toddlers’ worth of cardstock and elastic string, realizing that finding the right safari cone hats for kids is significantly harder than the Pinterest boards suggest. My son Leo was turning two,…
Standing in my driveway in Atlanta last April, I realized I was about to fail my son. Leo was turning twelve. Twelve is that weird age where they want to be men but still secretly love the stuff they liked at six. I had bought a bag of cheap, primary-colored balloons that looked like they…
The wind off Lake Michigan was howling against my Rogers Park kitchen window on August 12, 2025, while I stared at a pile of crumpled teal plastic and wondered if I had finally lost my mind. My twins, Maya and Leo, were turning five in exactly four hours, and I had eighteen sugar-fueled kindergartners about…
My kitchen looked like a Bluey-themed crime scene last March 14th. There were scraps of orange and blue crepe paper stuck to the baseboards, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be finding stray glitter in the grout until my youngest, Leo, goes to college. He’s four now, and along with his sisters Sophie (7) and Maya…
My kitchen floor on April 12, 2024, looked like a glitter factory exploded inside a tin foil manufacturing plant. Leo, my newly minted nine-year-old, was standing in the middle of this disaster zone holding a crumpled piece of silver cardstock. We were three hours away from eight very energetic third-graders arriving at my Atlanta townhouse…
Teaching twenty-two second-graders in Houston during a thunderstorm is basically the same thing as managing a construction site without the hard hats. Last March 12, I decided to bring that chaos home for my son Leo’s 9th birthday. I had exactly forty-seven dollars left in my “sanity fund” to feed thirteen boys who eat like…
My kitchen floor was a literal sea of purple glitter and half-eaten Cheerios on the morning of April 12, 2025, and I still hadn’t found the tape. Maya was turning four, and in suburban Portland, a four-year-old’s birthday is basically the Super Bowl but with more crying and expensive cupcakes. I stood there, coffee cold…
My son Leo turned twelve on June 14, 2025, and I found myself staring at a pile of yellow cardstock and a glue gun that looked more like a weapon than a craft tool. Being a single dad in Atlanta means I am often the guy at the party store who looks like he is…
