Houston humidity doesn’t just ruin my hair; it makes cheap paper confetti stick to a tile floor like it was applied with Gorilla Glue. On March 12, 2024, I stood in my kitchen watching eleven 11-year-old boys scream at the top of their lungs because Tyler had finally “tamed a wolf” in his virtual world….
My living room looked like a strawberry milkshake exploded, and not the delicious kind you get at a diner. It was March 12, 2024, and I was standing knee-deep in shredded crepe paper while thirteen screaming three-year-olds circled my coffee table like pink-clad vultures. My daughter, Maya, was turning three, and I had exactly $50…
Blue crepe paper tangled around my ankles like I was wrestling an angry octopus in my Logan Square kitchen on April 12, 2024. My twins, Leo and Mia, were turning two. Twenty-one toddlers were about to descend on our tiny apartment. My bank account was looking lean. I had exactly $75 in cash stuffed in…
Twenty-two second-graders. One classroom. A lot of sticky fruit punch. That was my Tuesday afternoon back in April 2025 when I helped my friend Sarah throw a birthday bash for her son, Leo. I’ve been teaching elementary school here in Houston for fifteen years, and if there is one thing I know, it is that…
My living room looked like a disaster zone, and for once, it wasn’t because of my own lack of housekeeping. On April 12, 2025, I hosted fifteen ten-year-olds for my son Leo’s birthday here in Atlanta, and if you’ve never seen a pack of pre-teens tackle a pile of cupcakes, you haven’t lived. I learned…
My kitchen in Cabbagetown, Atlanta, currently looks like a glitter bomb detonated inside a craft store. I’m Marcus. I’m a single dad who, through a series of increasingly expensive mistakes, has become the de facto party planner for my seven-year-old daughter, Lily. Last year, I learned the hard way that a “fairy theme” isn’t just…
My golden retriever, Barnaby, was wearing a rhinestone-studded butterfly clip when my niece Maya turned eight last October 14th. We were knee-deep in inflatable flip phones, authentic Lisa Frank stickers I sourced from eBay, and the absolute chaos of twenty-one sugared-up third graders running wild through my Austin backyard. The Texas heat was still hovering…
The humidity in Austin last May was basically a character from a Gabriel García Márquez novel, and my living room looked like a rainbow exploded. It was May 14, 2025, and I was exactly three hours away from hosting my niece Sofia’s 10th birthday bash. Cooper, my golden retriever, was currently sporting a stray purple…
Glitter is currently embedded in my classroom rug and I am fairly certain it will remain there until the building is eventually condemned. Last November 14, 2024, I hosted a birthday bash for my niece Lily’s third birthday, and if you have ever tried to coordinate fifteen toddlers while wearing an Elsa braid that keeps…
I stared at the stack of smudged cardstock on my granite countertop while my dog, Barnaby, tried to eat a stray glitter star. It was March 14, 2024, and I was three days behind on sending out the baseball invitation for kids for Leo’s 10th birthday bash. My printer had just groaned, spat out a…
