My son Leo turned three on May 12, 2025, and I decided to turn our living room in Decatur into a mini-NASA control center, mostly because I’m still trying to redeem myself for the 2024 dinosaur disaster where the T-Rex looked like a depressed gecko. I spent three weeks obsessing over the best banner for…
The humidity in Austin on March 14, 2026, was enough to melt the frosting right off a cupcake before my nephew Jax could even think about blowing out his candles. I stood in my driveway, sweat dripping down my neck, staring at nineteen ten-year-olds who were vibrating with the kind of energy only sugar and…
My backyard in Austin looked like a scene from a fever dream last Saturday, and I am still finding stray glitter in the crevices of my patio furniture. I spent three weeks obsessing over the perfect shade of moss and trying to figure out how to make 30-year-old professionals feel like they were wandering through…
Last Saturday, April 11th, I found myself standing on a wobbly kitchen chair in my friend Jen’s living room, sweating through my favorite linen jumpsuit while trying to defy the laws of physics with a pj masks party streamers set. Leo was turning seven, and if you know anything about seven-year-olds in Austin, you know…
My living room floor in Kirkwood, Atlanta, looked like a tropical cyclone had hit a craft store by 2:00 PM on April 12, 2025. I was three hours away from my daughter Lily’s 12th birthday party, and I had just realized that “Moana” doesn’t mean the same thing to a pre-teen as it does to…
Standing in the middle of my living room in suburban Atlanta, I felt like a gladiator who had brought a plastic butter knife to a sword fight. It was April 12, 2025, exactly three hours before my daughter Maya turned three, and the “magical forest” I had promised looked more like a cardboard box graveyard….
Maya turned nine last June, and she decided her entire personality was now “underwater royalty,” which sounds much more expensive than my bank account was ready for. I’m Marcus, a single dad in Atlanta who can fix a broken fuel pump in a 2012 Ford F-150 but gets physically intimidated by a glue gun. I…
March 12, 2024, is a date burned into my brain because that was the day I realized I was officially outnumbered by nineteen twelve-year-olds in my own living room in Atlanta. My son, Leo, had reached that awkward age where he still wanted to build spaceships but desperately wanted to avoid anything that looked “for…
I stood in my kitchen on October 12, 2024, covered in charcoal-colored frosting that looked more like driveway sealant than buttercream. My son Leo was turning eight, and I had somehow convinced myself that a single dad with zero artistic talent could recreate a prehistoric swamp on a grocery store sheet cake. It was a…
My kitchen looked like a circus exploded in a flour factory. Red icing smeared across the granite, a rogue clown nose under the fridge, and me, a single dad in Atlanta, holding a glue gun like a weapon. I learned the hard way that a carnival birthday cake topper is the only thing standing between…
