Hump Day Help! The Little White Dress

Its Wednesday again and that means irrepressible hump day style at All Kinds of Pretty. Last week in my desperate shopping spree, I not only bought shoes, I bought a bunch of dresses. The first three were so credulously ill-fitting and awful I refused to even snap a photo of them. Suffice it to say that one of them was a modified halter top TIE-DYE toga dress. Can you even begin to imagine? The other was decent enough – a green floral number whose over-done furbelows I was ready to forgive except that it was really just too short.

The last from Urban Outfitters was gorgeous, cream-colored, racer-back, with netting cut-outs and lace and I LOVE IT but sadly it was way way too tight in the bust. I knew this when I bought it but I bought the damn thing anyway.

However, it appears I was honing in on my ideal dress because the day before my reading, I found the right dress at a local boutique. I present to you: the little white dress.

I wished at first it had a little something more to it – some color at the hem or floral trim at the empire waist. But really, sometimes you shouldn’t screw with simplicity. I love the neckline of this dress, I love the skirt, and I love the fact that you can go crazy with jewelry, or a vibrant colored cami underneath or a crazy pair of shoes.

Plus, as my cousin pointed out when she saw the dress, it is not unlike the dress Maria wore in West Side Story, without the gorgeous red sash. And without me being Natalie Wood. Yes, I think I must be half mad to put a picture of myself next to a picture of Natalie Wood. But fashion makes us do crazy things.

The End of Summer Loving

Summer issue of the Park Slope Reader is out, complete with a new Dispatch from Babyville about my love-hate relationship with summer in the city. Click here to read The End of Summer Loving

Or, if you're too damn hot and lazy to click over, well, I'll reward you by pasting the essay below.

THE END OF SUMMER LOVING
By Nicole Caccavo Kear

Every June, I start a hot and heavy love affair with Summer in the City. I'm smitten with his seemingly endless sunlight and the opportunity he gives me to wear open-toed shoes. I can't get enough of sitting on the stoop while the kids play hopscotch and blow bubbles. The jubilation that comes with no more pencils, no more books is infectious, because even though school is out, I've shelled out the cash for a few weeks of summer camp. The sprinklers are on! There's an ice cream truck on every corner! Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

In July, the honeymoon comes to an end. The novelty of sprinklers has worn off and I begin to wonder what's in that soft serve my children are consuming in large quantities. The kids don't blink an eye at the sight of an available swing at the playground. Noses get burnt because I forget to re-apply sunscreen. The flame between City Summer and I is still very much alive but it does require some fanning. So I take the kids to fancy Manhattan playgrounds with sculpture gardens and unconventional climbing apparati. We step up our playdate game. We launch a lemonade stand.

Then comes August. When August hits the city, the living is not easy. Your daddy's not rich and your mama's not good-looking (though, for the record, she could be, in a season with less humidity and fewer bikinis). Camp is long over and I am on Mommy duty all day every day with a pair of tired, overheated whiners who regard everything with the bored expression I imagine Louis XIV had after he built Versailles. I realize that toddlers crap in the playground sprinklers and there's probably a raging case of cox sackie on the way. I want to throw Mr. Softie and his infuriating jingle into the East River.

Yes, by the first week of August, the passion that once burned so hot, so bright between City Summer and I is utterly extinguished. I know, for certain, that it's not going to work out. I just don't feel the same way about him anymore. Everyone else has walked out on him, to their country houses and vacation destinations, and now I see why.

All I really want is a trial separation in the form of a beach getaway, but since I have no money or connections to people with Hampton houses, I am trapped. So I agree to give my relentless beau one last chance. I plan a stay-cation.

Like deciding to move in with a boyfriend to save the relationship, the stay-cation seems like a good idea, but it isn't. The behavior that annoyed you before becomes intolerable, your few remaining stores of goodwill are quickly depleted, and you end up with a really nasty breakup.

Which is precisely what happened between City Summer and I last year. The breakup took place in the climactic moment of our stay-cation, when David and I took the kids, 4 and 2 years old, to the Statue of Liberty.

I feel a special affection for Our Lady of the Harbor. My grandmother immigrated to America 52 years ago, and she has described many times the way her heart was seized with joy when she caught sight of Lady Liberty as her boat pulled into port. Whenever we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, the kids yell "Hello!" to the great green girl. We have a large, artsy print of her hanging in the front entrance of our apartment. We know all sorts of trivia about her construction, gleaned from watching Ken Burns documentaries as a family. So we were genuinely jazzed to set foot on Liberty Island.

The good news is, I gained newfound appreciation for how my grandmother felt on that boat squeezed among sweating hordes with her two hot, hungry, tired children. In particular, I now have a real understanding of those famous words inscribed on Lady Liberty's pedestal, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

"I always thought it was 'be free,'" I told David.

"Me too," he replied, "But now it makes sense. After riding in that boat I am actually yearning to breathe free. It really smelled like crap."

The stench and the heat were only the first of many nails hammered into the coffin of my love for City Summer. There was also:

The pulling of a double stroller up crowded ferry stairs, provoking expletives in every language, just so the kids could stand on the deck and feel the bay breeze in their hair.

The wrestling with a toddler who, inspired by said breeze, wants to jump overboard for a little dip.

The consoling of a terrified preschooler after he is forced to walk through a high-tech security gate that blasts him with puffs of air (how can you be sure it isn't poison, the kid wants to know).

The breakdown of all sanity when after arriving to blazing hot, overcrowded island of Liberty, both children report that they are too tired to walk up any steps and demand to be carried.

The epic quest to secure a photo of all four of us in which we are not yelling at the kids or the kids are not yelling at us, so that we can always remember this glorious day (a big thanks to the stranger who snapped the one decent picture horizontally so that the only glimpse of the magnificent icon is about a quarter of her pedestal)

All of which culminated in my yelling, like I had an important announcement for all to hear: "I AM NEVER HAVING ANOTHER CHILD!"

And that was when I broke up with Summer in the City.

There was a week left in August, but we spent it in our air-conditioned apartment, reading books, drawing pictures and watching PBS. Finally, Labor Day arrived, and City Summer agreed to give me some space, which was convenient seeing as I'd started a dalliance with autumn. Could you blame me? September, that hunky stud, puts my kids back in school. He's downright irresistible.

Graduation time: do you have a tissue?

I am a crier. Not in the sense of someone who makes announcements for the town but in the sense of a person who weeps often, especially for joy. Yep, I cry for joy a lot, so much so that when Primo was about 3 years old, I remember he went to school and saw a picture in a book of a woman crying and the teacher asked what she doing doing and he said “She’s crying for joy.”

When it comes to baptisms, weddings and graduations, I am like a woman preparing a shitload of French onion soup. I realize that in can freak my kids out when I start to publicly bawl, and it’s pretty damn embarrassing for me too, so I try to restrain myself but I am a highly emotional creature and sometimes I just can’t cut off the waterworks. Since it is graduation time, there has been a lot of tearing up lately.

At Seconda’s graduation, I was all kinds of choked up. The two women that teach the two and three year-olds at their Montessori are actual saints. They are the very pinnacle of teacher-dom; kind, caring, and firm, they really embrace each child for who they are, exactly who they are, faults, idiosyncrasies, peccadilloes, the whole kit and caboodle. I mean, I can’t even afford the same level of acceptance and generosity to my own husband and they afford to every kid in their class. You honestly get the sense that EVERY child is their favorite child, and that they genuinely love their jobs, that they enjoy spending their days with a room full of 2 year-olds. And frankly, they manage the kids so impeccably that I enjoy spending time in their room of 2 year-olds. Outside of that classroom, I can’t take more than one two-year old around me at a time without wanting to pull my hair out but in their little Xanadu, the kids are kind, helpful industrious. They share. They work quietly. They say please. I don’t know what those teachers have coursing through their blood that makes them so calm and supportive but if I could buy it on the black market, I would.

I’ll put it to you this way. I am not the only parent who told them that I’d consider having another baby just so I could get to come back to their classroom.

So when it was time to say goodbye, Seconda was totally fine and I was wiping my eyes like a sap, giving the teachers over-long hugs like a weirdo. I love those guys. It is the end of an era now that my baby’s been through their classroom.

Primo just had his Kindergarten graduation, too, and although it’s not been as smooth sailing this year for him, thanks to a few persistent playground bullies, I nonetheless started to tear up when he walked over with his official diploma.

“Mommy is so proud of you.” I wept, “You’re such a big boy.”

In these graduation moments, I can’t help but see how quickly time is passing. I remember with a keen clarity the very first time I saw my baby boy, I remember pinching his toe to make sure he was still breathing and being too scared to change his diaper. And now he’s finished Kindergarten. Next year, he’ll be in an official, numbered grade with no “Kinder” to indicate that he is still a little boy. Next thing you know he’ll be packing the car to drive off to college and I’ll be making a huge, ridiculous scene with my mascara running, chasing after the car, yelling, “You’re still my baby! You’ll always be MY LITTLE BABY!!!!!!”

So not cool.

Global Cooling

Ok, so its officially hot. Its you-can-fry-an-egg-on-the-pavement, can't-take-my-ring-off-my-finger, heatstroke hot. And you know what I like to do when the going gets hot?

EAT ICE CREAM.

Yeah, I'm a real sucker for a popsicle and the like. And since I live in the greatest city in the world, I don't need to settle for Mr. Softie. I do, 90 percent of the time, make no mistake, because who has the money or stamina to do otherwise, but still, for that 10 percent of the time when you want something special, you can avail yourself of an ice cream from some far-off part of the world, right here in New York. I just wrote a piece about international ice cream for the current issue of Time Out NY Kids which you can read here, and believe you me, this was my kids' favorite article I've ever written.

They are still talking about the shave ice with marshmallow fluff. Ahhhhhh . . . . .

Desperate shopping

You know its’ been a hell of a hump day when I don’t even get around to posting my Hump Day Help on All Kinds of Pretty til the next day. With my daughter out of school, the hump has been more steep than usual and it took all of my powers to get over it. But here I am, better late than never, and as it turns out I’M the one who needs help. Fashion advice, I mean.

This past week, I went on a shopping spree, in order to find something I could wear to a reading I did on Tuesday night. It was desperate shopping. You know what I mean -- when you have an event to go to and nothing to wear and no time to really get into it, so you just madly dash around, paying way too much money for shit that doesn’t even look good on you? My favorite is when I buy stuff that I know FULL WELL requires a super-specialized undergarment which I do not own, but I hand over my credit card anyway because I’m desperate and I think maybe I’ll have the time to undertake a NEW search for the perfect undergarment to go under this overpriced, unflattering dress. I don’t know why I think I’d have the time to do this if I don’t have the time to head to a store where I could actually find a dress in my price range that looks good on me. And of course, I am not able to procure the necessary strapless/ racer-back/ seamless bra and so the dress remains in the bag and I end up wearing some old number that I’ve worn a hundred times, my back up dress. And then when the event is over and it occurs to me that I have a bunch of expensive dresses that I can have to return, I realize that since I bought them at little boutiques near my house, I have already gone over the week grace period for money-back returns and now much accept store credit. Which wasn’t part of the plan.

So this week I bought three dresses that looked just perfectly AWFUL on me – didn’t even fit, actually, what was I even THINKING? In addition to which, I purchased a new pair of shoes which I like, I really do, but when it came time to put them on for my reading, I opted not to. I just didn’t like them ENOUGH. I didn’t like them better than my back-up shoes – the pink satin Bottega Venetas I always wear. And as I still have four days left before I am stuck with the shoes permanently, I’d like your advice.

To keep or not to keep?

You're looking at the Chelsea Crew Carla Dance Class Heel, $69

What prompted me to buy these is the color also the heel, which gives you a nice lift and the feeling of wearing heels, but is low enough that I thought I’d be enticed to wear them even when I didn’t feel like making the full commitment to stilettos. The website calls it a “dance heel” which sounds about right. The cons – I don’t really have $69 to spend on a shoe I didn’t even wear for the occasion I bought it for. And also I am worried the criss-cross-edness will give me insane blisters. These ain’t no Saltwater sandals (which incidentally I am wearing right now and they feel positively dreeeeeamy).

I was thinking of exchanging them instead for these adorable little shoes, same price, which are more casual and which I think I might get more use out of. They even have them in red, and you know how I feel about red shoes in the summer.

What say you, readers?

Oh no he didn't!

The kids have had a rough week sleep-wise. There was the day Seconda decided to wake at 3am and start her day nice and early. And I don’t know what’s in the air but the nightmares have been turned on full-force, and one or the other child has woken up at least one a night screaming from bad dreams. Poison! Fire! Monsters!

Over the weekend, Primo woke at 4:45am, and I quickly ushered him into our bed, because if he’s awake alone, there’s a chance I can get him to go back to sleep, or at least watch TV while we sleep but if he wakes his sister, we are not only up shit’s creek without a paddle but without a boat. We will DROWN in shit’s creek if both he and his sister are awake. So I brought him into bed with us and he did doze off but slept so fitfully it was really hard to tell he was asleep.

“NO!” he yelled in his sleep, “DON”T LET SECONDA GET IT!!”

I find it hilarious that he spends his sleeping hours worrying about the same thing he does while awake. Must keep the prized possessions away from ratty kid sister. This is the stuff that (bad) dreams are made on . . .

So, what with all this, I woke this morning dog-tired. You know when you get so tired that nothing can wake you -- even the children jumping on you in bed and screaming as they kick and punch each other and reporting to you that their brother or sister is eating an entire box of cookies. That’s how tired I was.

David came home from his workout to find me still in bed. He brought me a cup of coffee and I slowly began to join the land of the living.

“I am just SO TIRED.” I moaned, “I don’t know why.”

Which was just something to say, not true at all. Of course I do know why, precisely why and the reason for my fatigue is my kids wake me up all night with piercing screams of pain and agony.

But instead of assuring me that I had plenty of good reason to be tired, my husband, issued a highly ill-advised reply.

“Well’’, he said, “You’re not as young as you used to be/”

Gasp. Horror. Not even employing the courteous “we” as in “we’re not as young as we used to be.” Just a

balls-out announcement before 8am, before I’ve even gotten to the half-way point in my coffee, that I am OLD.

AND THAT”S NOT ALL.

He then continued on, in a perfect example of adding insult to injury: “And your metabolism is slowing down.”

“WHOA!” I cried,“Whoa now! Why do you need to bring my METABOLISM into this? I don’t see how that’s material whatsoever. There’s no call for that, no call for that at all.”

“I just mean –“

“Maybe you just shouldn’t say anything else, while I ponder on those nuggets for a while.”

Has this man never met me before? Is this our first time at the rodeo?

I think it was a teachable moment. For him, the lesson was, never throw around the word metabolism without serious forethought and certainly not in the same sentence as “you’re not as young as you used to be.” And for me, maybe a little less complaining, much as I do cherish it. I was born to kvetch. But, I guess, that’s what blogs are for.

Freaky. Franky Father's Day

On Saturday morning, I asked David if he wanted to go to Home Depot before I headed into the city with Primo for the exciting conclusion of the avant-guard Pinocchio theater workshop for children.

“So I guess you haven’t planned an exciting getaway for us this weekend, then?” he replied.

“What?” I asked.

“Here I’ve been thinking you’ve haven’t said anything about what we’re doing on Father’s Day weekend because you were busy planning a big surprise,” he said, “And actually we’re just going to Home Depot."

“Oh, wow, sorry to disappoint,” I said, “We don’t have to go to Home Depot if you don’t want to. But yes, by now it must be apparent, no getaway. However, I have left tomorrow WIDE OPEN and we can do anything your heart desires!”

I’m not sure if it was everything his heart desired but we had a nice Father’s Day in the great Island of Coney.

We missed the Mermaid Day Parade which was on Saturday, but Sunday was a beautiful beach day – slightly overcast, not too crowded. We beat the crowds at Nathan’s by eating at 10:30am, indulging in what David has termed the hot dog breakfast – not an “everyday treat” I told the kids, but since it was Father’s day . . . Then off to the beach where the kids played merrily together for a half hour - incredible! I guess the universal appeal of sand can bridge all sibling difference. It took at least that long to get the sand off of Seconda, who is fond of doing headstands in wet sand. Then off to Deno’s where the kids got to ride Dizzy Dinosaurs, the flying elephants and – my personal favorite – the motorcycles! The sight of those motorcycles, the lurching sound of them, the feel of the scorching metal, takes me way back to my childhood days.

And then, as a special Father’s Day treat, Seconda agreed to ride the Wonder Wheel with David. This is momentous. We are a couple who love the Wonder Wheel, but our kids have never been old enough to take a ride. Or they were old enough, like Primo, but were just too freaked out to take the leap. We couldn’t convince Primo to go on this time either, so I stayed earth-bound with him and David and Sec took to the skies.

Oh, dear sweet island of freaks and franks! One-stop shopping for summer fun.

Then, in the evening, I did take David on a mini-surprise date, out to dinner at this new gastro-pub he’s been wanting to try. It wasn’t a weekend at the Riviera but the burgers were tasty and we got to hold hands on the walk over.