Milo’s First Birthday! Our Rootin’ Tootin’ Budget Cowboy Party for Toddler Fun! the_real_connor: Y’all! I just HAD to share about Milo’s first birthday party last weekend! My little man turned ONE, can you believe it?! Time flies when you’re having fun and chasing a toddler and a five-year-old (Chloe’s still got SO much energy!) around…
Houston humidity doesn’t just ruin my hair; it makes cheap paper confetti stick to a tile floor like it was applied with Gorilla Glue. On March 12, 2024, I stood in my kitchen watching eleven 11-year-old boys scream at the top of their lungs because Tyler had finally “tamed a wolf” in his virtual world….
I stood in the middle of Piedmont Park last August, sweat dripping down my neck, watching fifteen eight-year-olds try to move as slowly as humanly possible. My daughter, Maya, had decided that sloths were her spirit animal. As a single dad who once tried to host a “Space Explorer” party that ended with a literal…
My kitchen floor currently looks like a glitter bomb went off in a tropical rainforest, and I have exactly three minutes of silence before Leo wakes up from his nap to find out I ate the last of the “magical” blue corn chips. We just wrapped up Maya’s big birthday bash here in drizzly Portland,…
My living room looked like a strawberry milkshake exploded, and not the delicious kind you get at a diner. It was March 12, 2024, and I was standing knee-deep in shredded crepe paper while thirteen screaming three-year-olds circled my coffee table like pink-clad vultures. My daughter, Maya, was turning three, and I had exactly $50…
I woke up at 3 AM last Tuesday sweating about paper sharks. My son Leo was turning four on June 12th, and my basement was already a sea of blue streamers and suspicious-smelling “ocean” scented candles. One specific question kept rattling around my brain like a loose Lego: how many birthday hats do I need…
Blue crepe paper tangled around my ankles like I was wrestling an angry octopus in my Logan Square kitchen on April 12, 2024. My twins, Leo and Mia, were turning two. Twenty-one toddlers were about to descend on our tiny apartment. My bank account was looking lean. I had exactly $75 in cash stuffed in…
Twenty-two second-graders. One classroom. A lot of sticky fruit punch. That was my Tuesday afternoon back in April 2025 when I helped my friend Sarah throw a birthday bash for her son, Leo. I’ve been teaching elementary school here in Houston for fifteen years, and if there is one thing I know, it is that…
My kitchen floor in Logan Square looked like a glittery crime scene last Tuesday. Leo and Maya, my six-year-old twins, decided every single stuffed animal in the house needed a birthday party, specifically a cat-themed one. I stood there with a lukewarm coffee in one hand and a giant cardboard box in the other, realizing…
My living room looked like a disaster zone, and for once, it wasn’t because of my own lack of housekeeping. On April 12, 2025, I hosted fifteen ten-year-olds for my son Leo’s birthday here in Atlanta, and if you’ve never seen a pack of pre-teens tackle a pile of cupcakes, you haven’t lived. I learned…
