The humidity in Austin on March 15th was a literal crime against humanity. My hair was three times its normal size, my Golden Retriever, Waffles, was panting like he’d just run a marathon in a fur coat, and I was standing in the middle of H-E-B staring at a freezer case with a very specific…
Last Saturday, April 11th, I found myself standing on a wobbly kitchen chair in my friend Jen’s living room, sweating through my favorite linen jumpsuit while trying to defy the laws of physics with a pj masks party streamers set. Leo was turning seven, and if you know anything about seven-year-olds in Austin, you know…
My living room floor in Kirkwood, Atlanta, looked like a tropical cyclone had hit a craft store by 2:00 PM on April 12, 2025. I was three hours away from my daughter Lily’s 12th birthday party, and I had just realized that “Moana” doesn’t mean the same thing to a pre-teen as it does to…
Standing in the middle of my living room in suburban Atlanta, I felt like a gladiator who had brought a plastic butter knife to a sword fight. It was April 12, 2025, exactly three hours before my daughter Maya turned three, and the “magical forest” I had promised looked more like a cardboard box graveyard….
@isla_partymom: Hey everyone! Isla here, from sunny San Antonio. Easter is just around the corner, and honestly, I’m already deep in planning mode for Ezra (my 11-year-old) and our very enthusiastic rescue mutt, Scout. Last year’s egg hunt was… memorable. I thought I was so clever hiding eggs by color for different age groups, but…
Maya turned nine last June, and she decided her entire personality was now “underwater royalty,” which sounds much more expensive than my bank account was ready for. I’m Marcus, a single dad in Atlanta who can fix a broken fuel pump in a 2012 Ford F-150 but gets physically intimidated by a glue gun. I…
My kitchen floor looked like a unicorn had a very messy accident on April 3rd, 2024. Crepe paper streamers in every shade of the ROYGBIV spectrum were tangled around my ankles while I tried to figure out how to throw a rainbow party for 6 year old twins on a budget that would make a…
March 12, 2024, is a date burned into my brain because that was the day I realized I was officially outnumbered by nineteen twelve-year-olds in my own living room in Atlanta. My son, Leo, had reached that awkward age where he still wanted to build spaceships but desperately wanted to avoid anything that looked “for…
I stood in my kitchen on October 12, 2024, covered in charcoal-colored frosting that looked more like driveway sealant than buttercream. My son Leo was turning eight, and I had somehow convinced myself that a single dad with zero artistic talent could recreate a prehistoric swamp on a grocery store sheet cake. It was a…
Last April in Austin, I found myself wrestling with a six-foot inflatable cow in my backyard while the Texas sun threatened to melt my iced latte. It was my nephew Jackson’s fifth birthday on April 12, 2025, and his only request was “lots of cows and tractors.” I spent three hours staring at a bag…
