Piedmont Park was a sea of red, blue, and green on that humid Saturday in March 2024, and my son Leo was finally turning three. I thought I had everything figured out until the wind picked up and I realized my biggest mistake was forgetting the tape for the pj masks tablecloth for kids I’d…
Twenty-two fifth graders, all approximately twelve years old, smelling like a mix of Takis and unwashed gym socks, are not who you want to be trapped with in a Houston classroom when the AC fails in mid-May. It was May 15, 2024, and the humidity was sitting at a thick 92 percent. I had exactly…
Dragging two energetic ten-year-olds through the party aisle at the dollar store on Western Avenue in the middle of a Chicago sleet storm isn’t exactly a spa day. My twins, Leo and Maya, had their hearts set on a blocky, pixelated world for their tenth birthday on March 14, 2025. I had exactly $50 in…
Thirty fourth-graders staring at me with the intensity of a Charizard about to use Flamethrower is my typical Tuesday, but Leo’s 10th birthday last October was a different beast entirely. We live in Houston, where the humidity is thick enough to melt a glue gun’s hopes and dreams before you even plug it in. I…
Atlanta in October usually feels like a sauna that forgot to turn off the steam, but on Saturday, October 12, 2023, the temperature actually dipped into the fifties. My son Leo was turning four. I had seventeen kids coming over to our small backyard, and I decided, in my infinite single-dad wisdom, that a bonfire…
I stood in the middle of the party supply aisle on March 12, 2026, clutching a crumpled list and feeling the weight of a dozen twelve-year-old girls’ expectations. My daughter, Chloe, had decided that her twelfth birthday wouldn’t be a typical pre-teen “mall hang.” Instead, she wanted a “Retro Equestrian Bake-Off,” a weirdly specific mashup…
Carla is my neighbor, two houses down. We wave at each other over the fence and that’s usually where it ends. But in January she knocked on my door holding a stack of printouts and said “Dante wants a Super Mario party and I don’t know where to start.” I made her a cup of…
My sister called me in tears over a deflated checkered balloon, which meant I officially became the designated headwear coordinator for my nephew Leo’s fourth birthday. The theme was “Vintage Grand Prix.” Very Austin. Very cute. Finding the perfect race car birthday cone hats that actually fit tiny, sweaty four-year-old heads without disintegrating into papier-mâché…
Thirty minutes before the bell rang on March 12, 2025, I stood in my Houston classroom staring at a lopsided grocery store sheet cake that looked like it had been through a tropical storm. My student, Leo, was turning eleven, and in a fit of over-ambition, I had promised his mom I would handle the…
My living room currently looks like a fuzzy red monster had a disagreement with a glitter bomb, and honestly, I am not even mad about it. If you have ever stepped on a stray googly eye at 2 AM while trying to find the bathroom in a rain-soaked Portland suburb, you are my people. I…
