Austin in October usually feels like a sauna that someone forgot to turn off, but on October 14 last year, the air finally snapped into something crisp. My nephew Leo was turning 11, and my sister—bless her heart—decided a backyard campout for twenty-one energetic boys was a brilliant idea. She called me in a panic…
Hi everyone! Sarah here, from Richmond. Easter is creeping up fast, and I’m already feeling that mix of excitement and total panic, mostly about **Easter Eggs Safety for Toddlers**. My three youngest, Stella (2), Ezra (3), and Alice (4), are at that perfect age for egg hunts, but also that perfect age for putting *everything*…
My daughter, Chloe, looked me dead in the eye last August and told me she wanted a “mystery princess” party. As a single dad who barely knows the difference between a tiara and a headband, I panicked. I eventually realized she meant a masquerade, and since then, I have become something of an accidental expert…
The smell of burnt popcorn still lingers in my curtains from Leo’s third birthday last April. I tried to be the “fun dad” who built a backyard midway on a shoestring budget, but mostly I just learned that toddlers have the destructive power of a category four hurricane. If you are looking for carnival party…
Twenty-two sets of eyes stared at me last Tuesday while “Baby Shark” blasted from my classroom speakers for the fourth time in an hour. My name is Karen, and I have taught fifth grade in Houston for twelve years. You might think eleven-year-olds are too cool for a shark theme. You would be wrong. They…
I woke up on April 11, 2025, to the sound of twins jumping on my bed and the smell of slightly burnt toast. Leo and Maya were officially four. In Chicago, April weather is a gamble, and that morning, the sky was a bruised purple color that screamed, “Stay inside.” I had sixteen kids coming…
I sat at my kitchen table in Atlanta on a humid Tuesday morning, staring at a screen trying to figure out how to buy encanto party supplies that wouldn’t arrive looking like they’d been through a paper shredder. My daughter Maya was turning two on July 14th, and she was obsessed. Every morning, it was…
I stood in the middle of my kitchen in Logan Square last August, surrounded by sticky remnants of blue frosting and a pile of tiny, sweaty socks, wondering how on earth I had just pulled off a twin birthday party for under fifty bucks. It was August 12, 2025, a Tuesday that felt like a…
I stood in the party aisle of a big box store in downtown Atlanta, sweating right through my favorite gray t-shirt. Leo was turning exactly three on August 14th, 2024. Three-year-olds are supposed to like farm animals. Or generic fire trucks. My kid wanted blocks. Green blocks, brown blocks, pixelated pigs that make weird snorting…
My son Leo turned two on April 4th, and by 2:14 PM, my living room in Denver looked like a Bowser-themed tornado hit a spaghetti factory. There is a specific kind of chaos that happens when thirteen toddlers decide that red sauce is actually face paint. I stood there, clutching a stack of flimsy, generic…
