The janitor, Mr. Henderson, still looks at me with a slight squint in his left eye every time I pass him in the hallway of my Houston elementary school. It has been three weeks since the Great Confetti Cyclone of 2024. I thought I was being the “cool teacher” when I let 24 second-graders loose…
My living room in Logan Square looked like a Yoshi-sized explosion of primary colors and discarded cardboard on the morning of October 12, 2025. My twins, Leo and Maya, were turning seven, and they had exactly one demand: a Mario party that felt like a real-life Mushroom Kingdom. I had exactly one constraint: a $50…
I am currently standing in my kitchen in suburban Portland, surrounded by three kids who are vibrating with a level of energy that should probably be harnessed for the city power grid, and there is blue icing on my ceiling. It is June 14, 2025. My daughter Sophie is turning 6, and I thought I…
Austin in May is a special kind of humid misery that makes you question every life choice you have ever made, especially the one where I agreed to host my nephew Leo’s 11th birthday party in my backyard. It was May 14, 2025, and the thermometer on my patio hit 98 degrees before the first…
My kitchen looked like a pixelated crime scene because I thought it would be a “fun idea” to let an 11-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 4-year-old help me frost square cupcakes with neon green buttercream that eventually stained the grout of my backsplash forever. It was October 14, 2025, and my oldest, Leo, was turning…
The smell of bubblegum-scented markers and stale popcorn usually lingers in my classroom until at least Tuesday, but after the “Great Sanrio Social” of 2024, it stayed for a month. I’ve spent fifteen years teaching fourth and fifth grade here in Houston, which means I have seen every possible iteration of a childhood obsession. Last…
The sky over Portland looked like an old, wet sock on the morning of Leo’s fourth birthday, April 14, 2024. I was standing in my kitchen, clutching a lukewarm oat milk latte and staring at a safari birthday pinata that looked less like a majestic lion and more like a very confused, orange Cheeto. It…
My kitchen currently looks like a pink grenade went off, and honestly, I’m not even mad about it. Last Tuesday, while I was scraping dried oatmeal off the floor for the third time that morning, my friend Sarah called me in a full-blown panic. Her daughter Lily was turning one in less than two weeks,…
Twenty-one four-year-olds in a single room smells exactly like strawberry milk and impending doom. Last March 12, I found myself standing on a wobbly plastic chair in my Houston classroom, sweating through my favorite “Teacher Life” cardigan while trying to tape a unicorn party backdrop set to a cinderblock wall that clearly had an agenda…
I am a man who measures things. Twice. Sometimes three times if the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. My daughter Chloe turned four on June 14, 2025, and my living room in Denver looked like a glitter bomb had detonated in a pink paint factory. I didn’t just want a princess banner for her big…
