My living room looked like a pink grenade had detonated in a craft store. Glitter clung to the ceiling fans. I found a stray sequin in my coffee three days later. Being a single dad in Atlanta means you learn fast, or you drown in tulle and tears. My daughter, Maya, turned three on March…
Last Tuesday, my living room in Denver looked like a rainbow exploded, specifically a rainbow owned by a billionaire toddler named JJ. I stood there, clutching a lukewarm coffee, watching nineteen ten-year-old boys try to wear toddler-sized hats while unironically singing about vegetable songs. My son, Leo, had decided for his tenth birthday that “ironic…
@mia.schmidt: Okay, so, deep breaths everyone. My Wyatt (he’s 9 now, feels like just yesterday he was Sofia’s age, just a tiny one!) has officially declared he wants a “full-on construction site” birthday party this year. Not just, like, a few diggers, but the whole nine yards – hard hats, safety cones, dirt piles (fake,…
Leo stared at me with those wide, three-year-old eyes on the morning of March 12, 2024, and simply whispered, “Pika?” I knew right then that my weekend was gone. Living in Denver, you’d think finding pokemon birthday treat bags would be as easy as spotting a Subaru in a grocery store parking lot, but the…
March 12, 2024, was a cold, slushy Tuesday in Chicago, but inside our basement, we were preparing for a literal lift-off. My twins, Leo and Maya, were turning seven, and they had decided—with the unwavering authority only a first-grader possesses—that they needed an intergalactic bash. My bank account, however, was still recovering from a surprise…
My living room looked like a glitter bomb went off in a freezer last January when my middle child, Lily, turned five. If you live in Portland, you know that January is basically three hundred days of grey drizzle, so we decided to lean hard into the “winter wonderland” vibe to keep from losing our…
The smell of salt air was actually just a $12 “Ocean Breeze” candle burning in my kitchen while I frantically tried to duct tape a soggy cardboard sun back together, but in my head, we were at the Maldives instead of Lake Travis. It was June 14, 2025, and my niece Maya was turning eight….
My living room floor was covered in miniature plastic pigs and a staggering amount of artificial turf. It was October 12th, 2023. My son Leo was turning four. I stood there staring at three standard folding tables, holding a hot glue gun like a confused cowboy, wondering exactly how many centerpiece do I need for…
My living room floor looked like a Colombian jungle had exploded on it last May. Bright pink bougainvillea petals, mostly silk because I can’t keep a cactus alive, were stuck to the bottom of my socks. My middle child, Sophie, was turning seven, and she had one demand: an Encanto party that felt like the…
My kitchen floor in Logan Square was a graveyard of crumpled animal-print tissue paper and half-inflated gold balloons by 2 AM last Tuesday. I sat there, nursing a lukewarm coffee, surrounded by two dozen plastic lions that looked like they were judging my life choices. The twins, Leo and Maya, were finally asleep, dreaming of…
