One of my favorite trips I've ever taken in my life was with my friend Tia, during our spring break from studying abroad in London. That's us up there. I think we're 20.

When the semester ended we hopped a cheap flight to Athens, and then spent a week jumping between Greek Islands and staying in the most budget hostels we could find, and it was as amazing as it sounds: we ate yogurt with honey every morning, drank ouzo every night (and drank Coronas and milkshakes during the day, apparently), and spent our days climbing long, twisting flights of white steps up mountainsides in search of a gorgeous building or a little shop that sold homemade olive oil. We also wore lots of sweatshirts, because we had heard the words "Greek Islands" and not realized that even islands can be cold when you visit them in March.

I want to go back so badly. Bucket-listed.

{ Hatch dress; DKNY vest; Deux Lux backpack }

I hit the 6-month mark this week (! this is going fast)…and finally started feeling the awesome energy burst that is supposed to characterize the whole second trimester.

The truth is that this pregnancy has been way harder, physically, than my first: I had worse morning sickness (and was still sick here and there until just a couple of weeks ago), and fatigue that lasted well up through my fifth month (and that I assume will be coming back to make an appearance in Trimester Three)…but I attribute about 90% of the exhaustion to the fact that I'm a mom already, which means constant motion and not a whole lot of time to chill out and lay down, even if laying down is kind of what I need to do.

{ Anthropologie tunic; Deux Lux Karma Clutch; DIY-ed distressed jeans (tutorial) }

I don't know whether it's the warm air or what, but something's in the water lately: everyone is just so nice. The other day I went into the city to shoot a segment and hung around for awhile afterwards to get a few errands done (including a stop into Anthropologie to return a broken necklace, which I exchanged for the completely amazing tank pictured here)…and it was lovely.

As a point of reference, what usually happens when I go into the city for the day is I am instantly reminded of all the things about city life that make me glad that I'm close by, but no longer a resident. Like the people. Who are very numerous, and often very angry. And that many people being that angry…it makes me angry, too. And I hate hate hate being angry, because I get rude, and then I instantly feel guilty and beat myself up about it for the remainder of the day. A few weeks ago when I went in for a meeting I was trying to get off of the subway and got so frustrated by the fact that not one single person would move away from the door and allow me to take even one single step off that I actually yelled:

I don't work with Stuart Weitzman (I went to an event of theirs once and went home with a gorgeous pair of shoes and a discount card that enabled me to purchase additional pairs of shoes without passing out, but that's the extent of it).

I start with this caveat because this is now the second time I have needed to comment on their advertising campaign, because it is just so good. The first time I rhapsodized about just how very much I had fallen prey to whatever the people in their marketing department are up to was when they hired Kate Moss to wander around on the streets of London in over-the-knee boots looking hotter than a person should ever look…and this time it's because they've been posting shots over on their Instagram (which I follow, and shouldn't, because following their Instagram gets expensive for me) with the simple caption:

{ Koral Boyfriend Jeans; Elizabeth & James Blazer (similar); Bobo House Tee; Nine West Gamin d’Orsay Heels }

This is a topic I'm pretty big on.

Buying a ton of maternity pieces sounds fun…until you realize that they are often on the "dear god, no" side of expensive for things that you're only going to wear for what amounts to a handful of weeks. There are some pieces I'm happy to invest in - like a striped sweater or a silk blouse that I'd totally wear long, long after baby arrives - but as much as possible, I'm trying to just lightly sprinkle those "actual" maternity pieces into my "regular" wardrobe.

Kendrick took these photos when I was slightly less than three months pregnant - that's two full months ago - and I forgot to post them until now, and when I just scrolled back through my drafted posts and saw them I remember how I was so excited to finally be showing, and I thought I'd be all about the body-conscious outfits from that moment on straight through until the end, just because…you know, being pregnant is fun. It's fun to talk about it. It's fun to have strangers stop you on the street and congratulate you, or just smile at you, just because.

Except…I'm sort of not about those outfits, not like I expected to be. I'm bigger now than I was when these photos were taken, obviously, but still at the point where I can hide the fact that I'm expecting if I want to. And I've been sort of surprised by the extent to which I've been going for outfits that are less "hello-I-am-pregnant" and more…normal. Which for me means: loose and layer-y and not hello-I-am-pregnant at all.

Surprising, I guess, because the reality is that this is probably (not "definitely", but probably) the last time in my life I'll ever be pregnant. And going into this, I was so excited about it and so looking forward to everything that came with it that I really anticipated wanting to wear dresses or shirts that effectively showed off what was going on as much as possible. I kind of wanted to…you know…make a big deal about it, even if only through wearing baby doll dresses, body-hugging tops; styles that I wouldn't ordinarily wear.

{ Hatch Dress; Deux Lux Karma Clutch; Ann Taylor Coat }

This is the outfit I was wearing when I had my little mini-swoon on the way home from a shoot in the Village the other day. So that wasn't fun. But what was fun was that when I stopped into a store to rest for a moment, the store owner took one look at what I was wearing and did one of those dramatic snap-things and said, "Now that is how you do pregnancy clothing." Which was nice. Because I had been having a kind of terrible day, and to suddenly feel pretty and chic despite everything that was going on…it made me feel good. Better, at least.

And there's something great about the fact that a dress - just two pieces of fabric sewn together - can have the power to do that.