March 14th in Chicago usually means gray skies and slushy sidewalks on Milwaukee Avenue, but inside my cramped Logan Square duplex, it was a prehistoric heatwave. Leo and Maya just turned ten, and somehow I agreed to host 19 of their classmates in a living room that barely fits my sectional sofa. My bank account…
I learned the hard way that eleven-year-old boys and fragile table decorations do not mix. Last March, on a Tuesday that felt forty-eight hours long, my fifth-grade classroom in Houston was vibrating with the energy of twenty-two kids who had just earned their “Reading Black Belts.” The humidity outside was 98%, the air conditioning in…
The wind bit hard against my window on March 12, 2024, as I stood in my cramped Chicago kitchen, staring at a mountain of brown paper bags and wondering if I had completely lost my mind by promising my four-year-old twins, Leo and Maya, a full-blown rodeo in a 900-square-foot apartment. We had exactly $42…
Twenty-one first graders in a small Houston classroom on a humid Tuesday morning usually sounds like a recipe for a migraine, but on March 12, 2025, we were transforming into the Indy 500. I had exactly forty-two dollars in the class kitty and a mountain of “low battery” energy from the week before Spring Break….
Chicago winters have a way of sucking the soul right out of you, so by the time Maya and Arjun’s 5th birthday rolled around on March 12, 2025, I was desperate for something bright. My bank account, however, was looking a little bleak after the heating bill hit. I had exactly $50 for twenty kids….
Houston humidity is a beast that eats crepe paper for breakfast. I learned this the hard way on March 12, 2025, when I tried to throw a birthday bash for my daughter, Chloe, and her eight best friends. Twelve-year-olds are in that weird phase where they think they are thirty but still want to sing…
My classroom smelled like old gym socks and desperation by the third week of May. Teaching twenty-four fifth graders in the Houston humidity is a special kind of penance. We had survived state testing, three field trips, and a rogue hamster incident that I still cannot discuss without a twitch in my left eye. To…
Atlanta heat in July is no joke, but it pales in comparison to the sweat on a single dad’s brow when he realizes he forgot the barbie birthday cups for nineteen screaming eight-year-olds. I stood in the middle of a party store on Peachtree Road, surrounded by more shades of pink than I knew existed,…
Last March 14th, my four-year-old Leo decided that our backyard in suburban Portland needed a complete structural overhaul, which mostly involved him digging a massive hole in my prize-winning hydrangeas with a plastic shovel. It was the “Big Four” birthday, and since we live in the land of constant drizzle, I had to figure out…
Kindergartner Party Confessions: My Baby Shark Odyssey (and near disaster) @sarahdoescrafts: Okay, so my middle daughter, Alice, just turned six. She’s in kindergarten, and for months, all she could talk about was a Baby Shark party. Not “a party,” but specifically, a Baby Shark party. I swore I’d plan it early, but you know how…
