My living room floor looked like a Pepto-Bismol bottle had exploded during a Category 5 hurricane. It was August 14, 2025, and my daughter Maya had just finished her ninth birthday bash. I sat there, surrounded by a sea of fuchsia wrapping paper and half-eaten cupcakes that looked like they’d been through a blender, realizing…
My backyard looked like a hurricane hit a glitter factory by 2 PM on Saturday, March 12, 2025. The Austin sun was beating down on my patio while twelve sweaty kindergartners tried to stage a mutiny over the last blue cupcake. This was my nephew Leo’s 5th birthday, and I had volunteered my home and…
My kitchen floor was a literal sea of lime green crepe paper on the morning of March 12, 2024. Leo was turning five, and in his head, our living room needed to be a pixelated forest or the world would basically end. I had exactly two hours before eleven kindergartners descended on my house, and…
Twenty-two sticky hands were reaching for the same bowl of lukewarm popcorn when I realized my living room smelled less like a “cinematic experience” and more like a gym locker after a humid Houston middle school track meet in mid-August. It was March 12, 2024, and I had foolishly agreed to host a “Spring Break…
I was elbow-deep in orange tissue paper and tiny tiger-ear cutouts in my Austin kitchen last March, wondering if I had finally lost my mind. My dog, Barnaby, was currently trying to eat a stray piece of felt, and the humidity was already making my hair do things I didn’t authorize. My son Leo’s 3rd…
Leo’s face lit up when he saw the metallic shimmer reflecting off our kitchen walls on the morning of June 12, 2025. It was his 7th birthday, and I had committed to a “Galactic Explorer” theme that required enough chrome-colored gear to make a NASA engineer blink. Living in Denver means we deal with high-altitude…
I stood in the middle of my Austin living room last March, surrounded by beige cardstock and faux eucalyptus, realizing that most jungle decor looks like a toddler’s nursery. I needed a safari banner for adults that didn’t scream “diaper party” for my nephew Leo’s 5th birthday celebration on March 15, 2025. Even though the…
The humidity in Houston during March hits like a soggy wool blanket, but that didn’t stop fourteen eleven-year-old girls from buzzing around my living room like caffeinated monarchs on March 12, 2024. I have taught third grade at a local elementary school for fifteen years, which means I usually have a handle on chaos. However,…
I am still finding tiny orange and blue circles in the floor vents of our house in Beaverton, even though Leo’s fourth birthday was six months ago on March 12th. It was chaos. Pure, unadulterated, blue-and-orange chaos that smelled faintly of vanilla frosting and wet dog because, of course, it was raining in Portland that…
Living in a Logan Square apartment with two eleven-year-olds means my kitchen table is usually covered in half-finished homework, stray Lego bricks, and the occasional soccer cleat. When Leo and Maya told me they wanted a joint “Sports Extravaganza” for their birthday on March 12, 2026, my first thought went straight to the wallet. Chicago…
