My twins, Leo and Maya, turned two on a cold, rainy Saturday in Chicago. I had exactly forty-two dollars left in my monthly discretionary fund, eight toddlers arriving in less than three hours, and a massive, aggressively blank beige wall in my living room staring me down. If you are scouring the internet trying to…
My backyard in East Austin looked like a glitter bomb had detonated in a cotton candy factory. It was April 12, 2024, and the thermometer was already creeping toward eighty-five degrees, making the icing on my “Stay Magical” cake look a little more “Melting Disaster” than I intended. I stood there, clutching a lukewarm mimosa,…
Austin humidity is a beast that eats hairspray for breakfast, and last Saturday, April 20th, it decided to feast on my nephew Leo’s fifth birthday party. I stood in my sister’s backyard, clutching a lukewarm seltzer, watching my dog Barnaby try to make friends with a very confused rental goat. The theme was “Leo’s Little…
The Austin sun was beating down on my neck, and I was on my fourth iced coffee. Sophie was screaming “A-Meow-Zing” at the top of her lungs, spinning until she fell into a pile of cedar mulch. It was April 14, 2025. We were at Zilker Park, trying to celebrate her third birthday without melting…
My friend Sarah turned thirty-five last June and decided she wanted a “sophisticated sea” vibe, which basically meant I spent three hours wrestling with mermaid balloons for adults while my seven-year-old, Toby, tried to use the helium tank as a rocket ship. It was chaotic. I had iridescent glitter in my eyebrows for three days….
My living room smelled like damp carpet and generic brand juice boxes on Saturday, March 14, 2026. This was the aftermath of hosting 11 twelve-year-olds for my niece Chloe’s “Retro Peppa” birthday bash. You might think sixth graders are too old for a cartoon pig, but in my Houston neighborhood, irony is the reigning queen…
Austin in June feels like living inside a blow-dryer set to “maximum chaos,” but that didn’t stop my three-year-old, Lily, from demanding a full Polynesian voyage in our backyard. On Saturday, June 14, 2025, I found myself sweating through a linen romper while trying to duct-tape a moana banner for kids to a limestone wall…
Austin humidity is no joke when you are trying to glue three hundred paper wings to a dead tree branch in the middle of April. My niece, Lily, turned ten on April 12, 2025, and she had one demand: her birthday party had to feel like a literal swarm of monarchs had invaded our backyard…
My dining room table currently looks like a glitter bomb exploded inside a craft store, and I only have myself to blame. Three days ago, my youngest, Chloe, decided she desperately needed an enchanted forest gathering for her 6th birthday. Not just a standard party. A “mossy kingdom where the woodland creatures drink dew.” Her…
I stood in the middle of a Target aisle on Tuesday, October 14, 2023, clutching a crumpled list while a toddler screamed three aisles over. That was my first mistake. My daughter, Maya, was turning eight, and she wanted a winter wonderland that didn’t look like a dad-managed disaster. I learned quickly that a high-quality…
