Chicago wind is no joke when you are trying to balance a loaded chili dog on a flimsy piece of paper. I learned this the hard way on April 12, 2025, at Winnemac Park. It was my twins’ eighth birthday, and Sam and Leo were sprinting around the diamond like they just got called up…
I stood in my backyard last October, sweating through a flannel shirt that I thought made me look like a rugged rancher but actually made me look like a guy who got lost on his way to a lumberjack convention. My son Leo was turning 12 on October 14, 2024, and he decided—with the sudden,…
Twenty-two four-year-olds in a single room on a humid Tuesday morning in Houston is exactly as loud as you think it is. I sat there on April 21, 2026, staring at a box of empty toilet paper rolls and wondering if I had finally lost my marbles. My coworker, Sarah, had warned me that a…
My son Leo turned eleven last Saturday, April 18, and I finally accepted that I am not, and will never be, a professional set designer. Living in the humid heart of Atlanta means that any party planning involves a battle against physics and moisture. Last year, I tried to build a TIE Fighter out of…
The smell of spilled fruit punch and cheap face paint is basically my signature scent by mid-October. I’ve spent twelve years in the Houston Independent School District teaching second grade, which means I’ve survived enough classroom parties to know that “organized chaos” is a lie. It’s just chaos. But last year, when my student Timmy…
My garage still smells like a mix of industrial-strength spray adhesive and damp Northwest cardboard from Toby’s 9th birthday bash back on October 14th. Living in suburban Portland means you basically gamble with the weather every single time you host a party, and of course, that Tuesday was a total washout. I had thirteen sugar-hyped…
Managing twenty-two third graders is like trying to herd caffeinated squirrels through a car wash, but doing it in a ninja costume takes a special kind of patience. Last October 12, 2025, I found myself standing on a plastic chair in my Houston classroom, trying to tape black streamers to the ceiling while a student…
The wind in Denver does not care about your aesthetic. On April 14, 2024, I stood in my backyard with a vanilla bean cake that cost me forty-two dollars and a sense of impending doom as the breeze threatened to turn my daughter Maya’s second birthday into a scene from a disaster movie. I am…
My kitchen smelled like burnt popcorn and desperation on the morning of June 12, 2025. Leo and Maya, my five-year-old twins, were currently staging a protest in the living room because I told them we couldn’t fit a literal ferris wheel in our tiny Chicago backyard. Being a mom of twins means doubling the joy…
Sophie stared at me with those giant, demanding four-year-old eyes on April 12, 2026, here in sunny (but surprisingly windy) Denver. She didn’t want a generic tiara. She didn’t want a “princess” headband. She wanted—and she was very specific about this—the exact peppa pig birthday crown worn by Peppa in the “Queen Peppa” episode. As…
