Twenty-two second graders vibrating with the kind of energy usually reserved for a sugar-fueled rocket launch stood between me and my sanity last Tuesday. I stood in the middle of Room 4B, the Houston humidity making my hair double in size, while I frantically peeled apart a stack of minecraft birthday plates. The air conditioner…
My son Leo stood in the middle of our living room in Grant Park, Atlanta, last March, looking at a pile of green balloons that I had failed to tie into anything resembling a Stegosaurus. He was turning eight. I was turning into a stressed-out single dad who had spent way too much time on…
Austin, Texas in May feels like standing inside a blow dryer, but that didn’t stop me from trying to recreate the year 1999 in my backyard for my niece Mia’s 5th birthday. I was determined. I had the butterfly clips, the neon blue gushers, and enough holographic fringe to blind a pilot. My dog, Barnaby,…
Farm Animal Frenzy! My search for decorations is wild, where do YOU all shop? @cora85: OMG, party planning peeps! Cora here from Baltimore! 🎉 My sweet little Ivy is turning ONE in just three months (I know, I know, I start early! It’s the teacher in me, gotta be prepared!), and we are doing a…
My living room looked like a glitter bomb exploded in a moss factory. It was March 15, 2022, and my twins, Aanya and Ishaan, were officially turning one. The wind off Lake Michigan was howling like a banshee against our Chicago apartment windows, but inside, I was determined to create a woodland wonderland on a…
Sand was everywhere. It was stuck in the crevices of my minivan’s floor mats, it had migrated into the folds of the twins’ swim trunks, and it was currently threatening to ruin the $18 store-bought pasta salad I’d hauled all the way to Montrose Beach. Maya and Leo were turning twelve, which is that weird…
My living room in East Austin looked like a neon green jungle exploded on a Tuesday night. My five-year-old, Leo, was currently sprinting circles around our Golden Retriever, Buster, screaming about “falcon power” while I stared at a mountain of brown paper sacks and a glue gun that had definitely seen better days. It was…
Last Tuesday, my classroom smelled like sour milk and damp sneakers. After fifteen years of teaching fifth grade in Houston, you would think I’d be used to the chaos, but twenty-four eleven-year-olds on a rainy day is a special kind of purgatory. I sat at my desk, hiding behind a stack of ungraded long-division worksheets,…
Maya and Leo were vibrating with that specific brand of 8-year-old energy that only comes from a Colombian-themed animated movie and a looming birthday deadline. It was March 12, 2025, and my tiny apartment in Chicago’s Logan Square felt like it was shrinking by the second. I had exactly $100 in my “party envelope” and…
Chicago winters don’t just bite; they chew. Last March, specifically on Saturday the 14th, the wind was howling down Western Avenue like a literal banshee, and I was standing in a Dollar Tree aisle clutching a pack of flimsy primary-colored cones. My twins, Leo and Sam, were turning two. I had exactly $50 in my…
