Twenty-two first graders screaming “Can’t Stop the Feeling” at the top of their lungs while covered in neon pink feathers is my Tuesday afternoon reality. Teaching in Houston means surviving high humidity and even higher expectations for classroom celebrations. Every year, I swear I will keep it simple. Then I see the kids’ faces and…
My classroom currently smells like a mixture of industrial-strength floor wax and overripe fruit. It is Tuesday, April 14th, and I am sitting at my desk in Houston, Texas, staring at a stray red sequin that has somehow attached itself to my coffee mug. Last Friday, I hosted what I thought would be a simple…
My living room in Midtown Atlanta looked like a rainbow exploded, and not the cute kind you see on Pinterest. It was April 12, 2024, and I was exactly forty-seven minutes away from fifteen toddlers descending upon my apartment for my son Leo’s second birthday. I sat on the floor, surrounded by half-eaten chicken nuggets…
Denver wind howled across my backyard last Saturday, threatening to turn Leo’s eleventh birthday party into a literal debris field. I stood there, clutching a stack of orange cones while the neighbor’s golden retriever attempted to eat a plastic safety vest, wondering if my decision to host sixteen pre-teens in a simulated construction zone was…
My living room in suburban Portland looked like a high-tech crime scene last Saturday night, but the fun kind with neon lights and overpriced appetizers. My sister-in-law Sarah turned 30, and she made it very clear that she didn’t want another “quiet wine and cheese night” with the same three stories we’ve been telling since…
My nephew Leo turned eight last March, and in our corner of South Congress, that meant only one thing: a full-blown quest to find the perfect pokemon invitation that didn’t look like a pixelated mess from a 1990s clip-art gallery. Being the resident “cool aunt” and a self-proclaimed party enthusiast, I took the reins, thinking…
My kitchen floor was a literal sea of cobalt blue cardstock last March 12th when my middle son, Leo, turned six. I had this grand vision of eighteen tiny speedsters racing around our soggy Portland backyard, but reality hit hard when the “gentle spring mist” turned into a sideways downpour that threatened to melt every…
The smell of wet flour and desperation filled my kitchen on March 12, 2024, as I stared at what was supposed to be a majestic mermaid pinata but currently looked more like a lumpy, blue-tinted baked potato. My daughter Sophie was turning five in four days, and I had foolishly decided to DIY her party…
Last May, my oldest, Leo, turned ten, and honestly, I thought I was done with the “mom-group-chat-is-exploding” phase of my life. I was wrong. We went full Jurassic Park in our drizzly Portland backyard on May 12, 2025, and after three hours of chasing ten pre-teens through “volcano” smoke (dry ice is a nightmare, don’t…
My dining room table looked like Tinkerbell had a violent sneezing fit. Glitter covered the floorboards. It stuck to the dog. It coated my coffee mug. It was April 3, 2025, precisely nine days before my twins, Maya and Lily, turned seven. I had twenty energetic second-graders RSVPing to a woodland pixie bash in our…
