My fourth graders at Oak Creek Elementary here in Houston are obsessed with soccer, so when Leo’s mom asked for help with his 10th birthday on March 12, 2024, I knew we needed a soccer birthday cake topper that could survive 22 sweaty, sugar-crazed athletes. Soccer is life in this city. Between the humidity that…
My living room looked like a neon rainforest had a head-on collision with a glitter truck on March 14th. It was Maya’s 11th birthday, and if you know anything about pre-teens in suburban Portland, you know they are “too cool” for everything until they suddenly aren’t. Maya and her best friend, Chloe, decided they wanted…
Twenty-two five-year-olds in khaki vests is a recipe for either a core memory or a nervous breakdown, and last Tuesday, I flirted with both. My name is Ms. Karen, and I have taught kindergarten in Houston long enough to know that “safari day” is the loudest day of the school year. We had just finished…
Standing on a shaky aluminum step stool at 1:15 AM last Saturday, March 28, 2026, I realized my life had peaked while trying to tape 40 yards of forest green crepe paper to a popcorn ceiling. My neck cramped. The tape wouldn’t stick. My four-year-old, Leo, was fast asleep, dreaming of prehistoric predators while I…
My living room looked like a neon green crime scene on March 11, 2025. I was standing in our tiny Chicago apartment with sticky fingers and a glue gun that had just bubbled over onto my favorite rug. Maya and Leo, my ten-year-old twins, decided they wanted a “Toddler Core” birthday party. They thought it…
The humidity in Houston on March 12, 2024, was roughly 98 percent, and my second-graders were vibrating with that specific pre-Spring Break energy that keeps teachers awake at night. I had promised Chloe, who was turning eight and still harbored a fierce, unironic love for a certain British pig, that we would have a “Royal…
I sat in my Denver living room on a Tuesday afternoon, staring at a pile of primary-colored plastic bricks and wondering why on earth I agreed to host a “Master Builder” gala for sixteen people. Half of them were eleven-year-olds; the other half were their parents who secretly still have vintage space sets in their…
Glitter. Everywhere. It was embedded in my Chicago apartment’s cheap laminate flooring for three straight months. But seeing Maya and Leo’s faces on May 14th made the sparkly, chaotic mess completely worth it. My twins just turned 8. They sat me down at our tiny kitchen table and firmly informed me that cartoon fish were…
My living room looked like a glitter bomb detonated in a coal mine last Tuesday afternoon. My son, Leo, turned twelve on March 14, 2026, and he decided that a “Night of Gold” was the only acceptable way to transition into his pre-teen years. Being a dad who spends way too much time reading safety…
Twenty-two eight-year-olds staring at me while I try to stick a hibiscus flower to a cinderblock wall with old masking tape is my specific version of a Tuesday afternoon in Houston. I have glue in my hair. There is glitter in my coffee. My classroom smelled like coconut-scented sunblock for three weeks after we finished…
