Austin heat in mid-March is no joke, especially when you’re sprinting through the aisles of a party supply store trying to find the perfect shade of cobalt blue. I found myself in this exact predicament last year when my nephew Leo turned twelve. My sister was drowning in work, so I stepped in as the…
I stood there. Sweating. The Atlanta sun does not care about your child’s birthday. I had 45 minutes before the first minivan pulled into the driveway, and my living room looked like a circus exploded, which, to be fair, was exactly the theme I had promised Leo for his fifth birthday. Being a single dad…
My kitchen smelled like burnt cornmeal and desperation on the morning of March 12, 2024. Maya, my oldest, was turning eleven, and she had decided—after months of acting “too cool” for everything—that she absolutely needed an Encanto bash. Not just any bash, but a sophisticated, tween-approved version that wouldn’t make her feel like a toddler….
Hay was everywhere. My Honda Odyssey smelled like a stable for three weeks after the “Great Backyard Roundup” of 2018, and frankly, I am still finding bits of straw in the floor mats. I learned the hard way that throwing a budget cowboy party for teen guests is nothing like doing it for toddlers. If…
My kitchen floor in Decatur still has a faint yellow stain from the Great Pikachu Punch Spill of June 12, 2025. It was my son Leo’s 9th birthday, and I thought I had everything under control. I had the cake, the music, and thirteen screaming kids running around my backyard. But I made a rookie…
It was pouring rain in Portland last Tuesday, which is basically our default setting, so I was huddled over my kitchen island with a lukewarm latte trying to map out Maya’s 11th birthday. Maya is my oldest, and at eleven, she’s hovering in that weird space between “I still like mermaids” and “Mom, please don’t…
My living room looked like a glitter bomb had detonated in a saltwater marsh, but the smiles on those fifteen ten-year-old faces made every second of the three-hour cleanup worth the backache I’d certainly have tomorrow morning. Last March 15th, my niece Chloe turned double digits, and she decided she was officially too cool for…
My kitchen in South Austin smelled like a confusing mix of burnt vanilla bean and sheer desperation on the morning of Saturday, November 15, 2025. I was elbow-deep in black cocoa frosting, trying to make my nephew Leo’s 6th birthday look like a Gatsby-style gala because my sister, Jess, is deeply committed to the “aesthetic…
The wind off Lake Michigan was howling against my kitchen window on March 12, 2026, while I stared at a pile of soggy cereal boxes and a bowl of homemade flour paste that smelled vaguely of disappointment. My twins, Maya and Leo, were turning six in exactly two weeks, and Maya had declared—with the absolute…
Leo’s fourth birthday fell on October 12, 2025, which in Portland means one thing: rain. Not just a drizzle, but that gray, heavy Pacific Northwest downpour that turns your backyard into a literal swamp. I had this grand vision of nineteen toddlers roaming through our Douglas firs like tiny forest spirits, but instead, I found…
