My twins, Maya and Leo, hit age 11 last Tuesday, and they dropped a bomb on me that I absolutely did not see coming. Most kids that age want a gaming truck or a trampoline park party, but my two are obsessed with “Toddler-Core” irony right now, so they demanded a full-blown Cocomelon theme for…
Between the twelve screaming nine-year-olds and the smell of slightly burnt pepperoni pizza wafting from the kitchen, I realized that my living room had officially been annexed by a rogue league of justice-seeking pre-teens. My twins, Leo and Maya, had been counting down to April 12, 2024, for six months, and the pressure was on…
The humidity in Austin last April was thick enough to chew on, but my best friend Maya wanted a “Grown-Up Garden” theme for her 30th birthday, and I wasn’t about to let a little Texas sweat stop me. I stood in my kitchen on April 12, 2025, surrounded by three bags of preserved moss, six…
My living room looked like a pink tulle bomb went off last Saturday morning, and I was standing in the middle of it with a half-eaten Voodoo Doughnut and a very stressed-out 7-year-old. Sophie had decided, with the unwavering conviction only a second grader can possess, that her party absolutely required a ballet birthday pinata…
Austin in June feels like living inside a giant, wet wool sock, but that didn’t stop my nephew Liam from demanding a full backyard “Heeler House” experience for his fifth birthday on June 12, 2025. I was the designated “fun aunt” in charge of the table setup, which sounded easy until I saw twenty-one sweaty…
June 12, 2024, was the day I almost lost my mind in Piedmont Park. It was 94 degrees with that thick Atlanta humidity that makes your shirt stick to your back, and I was trying to tape a flimsy tea party birthday banner to a sapling that clearly didn’t want to be part of the…
I stood in the middle of a Target aisle three years ago, staring at a wall of pink plastic and feeling like a complete failure. My daughter Lily was turning four, and I had no idea what I was doing. Being a single dad in Atlanta means you learn fast or you get buried in…
Twenty-one ten-year-olds in a Houston classroom during a humid April afternoon is a recipe for absolute disaster if you do not have a plan that involves more than just lukewarm juice boxes and a prayer to the curriculum gods. I learned this the hard way on October 12, 2025. We were celebrating “Superhero Literacy Week”…
My living room looked like a pixelated explosion happened on March 12, 2026, which was the exact day my youngest, Leo, turned four. We live in a suburb outside Portland where the rain basically never stops in the spring, so an outdoor party was a total pipe dream. I had twenty four-year-olds coming over for…
Portland rain was hammering against my kitchen window last Tuesday while I sat surrounded by three half-empty coffee mugs and a mountain of silver Mylar fringe. My middle kid, Leo, decided he didn’t just want a birthday party; he wanted to go to Mars. Specifically, he wanted a “realistic” Mars mission for his 7th birthday…
