My kitchen island is currently a graveyard of rogue sequins, half-eaten string cheese, and enough hot glue strings to bridge the Columbia River. This is my life in suburban Portland, where the rain never stops and the birthday party expectations are, frankly, a bit much. Last March, my middle child, Lily, decided her 7th birthday…
The humidity in Austin was already creeping up on April 12, 2025, when I realized I had exactly seventy-two dollars in my “fun money” Venmo account and a daughter turning five who insisted on sleeping under the stars. June is my wild child, a kindergartner with a penchant for dirt and a refusal to wear…
The first time I tried to put together a dinosaur party for my son Leo back on June 12, 2021, I failed so spectacularly that I still find plastic T-Rex teeth in my couch cushions. I was a single dad trying to overcompensate for my lack of “Pinterest-mom” genes by throwing money at the problem….
Nineteen nine-year-olds in a three-bedroom bungalow in the middle of a Chicago sleet storm make a very specific kind of sound. It is a high-pitched, vibrating hum of pure energy that vibrates the pictures on my hallway walls. Last March 12, for Leo and Maya’s double birthday, I decided to lean into the chaos instead…
The humidity in Houston during early April is basically like living inside someone’s mouth, but that didn’t stop twenty screaming five-year-olds from demanding more blue frosting and even more snowflake-shaped glitter on their tiny, sticky hands. It was April 12th last year. My daughter Lily was turning five, and because I am a glutton for…
Blacklights forgive a lot of dust. That was my first thought as I surveyed our basement in Logan Square on November 2nd, 2023. Twenty-one 12-year-olds were smearing glow-in-the-dark paint on my cheap drop cloths. The music was loud. The pizza boxes were glowing an eerie radioactive white. My twins, Leo and Maya, wanted a rave…
Twenty-two third-graders. One kitchen. Three bags of “oops” brand flour. My Houston home looked like a powder factory exploded on Saturday, March 12, 2024, but I survived. Being an elementary school teacher means I live for the chaos of a classroom party, yet planning a budget baking party for 8 year old students requires a…
My kitchen island was completely buried under a mountain of synthetic turf runners, half-eaten granola bars, and exactly forty-two tiny plastic trophies when I realized I had made a catastrophic tactical error for Leo’s 7th birthday last April. It was April 12, 2024, a day that started with a classic Portland “mist” and ended with…
My kitchen floor in Chicago usually looks like a disaster zone by Tuesday afternoon, but last April 12th, it was a whole new level of chaotic. We had bits of dried maple leaves and crushed marigold petals stuck to the bottom of our socks, and my twins, Leo and Maya, were knee-deep in what I…
My living room floor was a disaster zone of half-eaten nuggets and sticky blue frosting when I realized I’d made a massive tactical error. It was July 14, 2025, the day of Sam’s 8th birthday bash here in rainy Beaverton, and the sound hitting my eardrums was less “doo-doo-doo-doo” and more “piercing-scream-of-a-thousand-banshees.” I had handed…
