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24 Week Check-In

Hatch dressDKNY vestDeux 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.

InstaGlam

Daily InstaGlam

Headed to Philly for a meeting with my editor (first time in the city in about nine years!).

Wearing: Sunday Somewhere Yetti sunnies / the most spectacular Samantha Wills earrings everrr / Cardigan snagged from the wardrobe for this week's Snuggle shoot / Deux Lux backpack / Gold heels (of course).

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Makeup & Beauty

How-To: Boho Braids

When warm weather arrives, so do The Braids. Seriously: there is no easier solution for a running-around-town style…and adding a little sparkle means the look can go from day to night, as well.

P.S. Not a huge fan of the word "boho"…but this look kind of is. Boho. So what can you do?

Entertaining

Fresh Mint Lemonade

When I first moved to LA, I found an apartment right off of the Sunset Strip and a job at an upscale-ish pizza place called Cheebo (the phonetic spelling of the Italian word for "food"). It wasn't too bad of a job - the food was pretty reasonably priced and lunchtime-focused, which meant that tips were only okay, but I liked my coworkers and really liked the staff meal that we got at the end of every shift. The part of it that I hated was when my manager asked me to work the brunch shift, because the brunch shift involved fresh-squeezed orange juice…and you know what's a major pain to make?

Fresh-squeezed orange juice. If you have never done this, let me tell you: you have no idea how many pieces of fruit it takes to make your teeny, tiny four-dollar glass of Vitamin C.

I think working at Cheebo gave me a bit of juice-making PTSD, because never since have I been enamored of the idea of fresh-squeezing my own anythings…but pregnancy does weird stuff, like make you all of a sudden need fresh lemonade RIGHT NOW.

DIARY

In The Middle Of The Night

Up all night with a sick baby + 5A.M. call time for today's shoot = sunglasses and juice.

(This post was written at 4:45A.M., so apologies in advance for any typos and/or general incoherence.)

Last night was a little rough.

Style

Mini Tip: Switch Up Your Earrings

I'm on set several days this week for a Snuggle campaign (which means - yes - that I get to meet The Bear at some point; I am weirdly excited about this). The crew working on this project includes some of my absolute favorite people in the industry, such as hair and makeup artist Kerry Lou (pictured with me above), videographer John (who shot all of my JITH segments), and stylist Felix, who I've known for years and who never fails to send me home with some completely random (and genius) wardrobe idea that I would never, ever have thought of on my own.

Yesterday's Felix Wisdom: when you're wearing earrings with a detail on only one side (like the pair pictured above), try putting them on your ears the reverse way, with the post going through from the back, so that the side with the detail frames your face - as opposed to only being visible when you turn your head. (Especially good if you're taking lots of forward-facing photographs, such as for a wedding.)

Baby

What I Bought: Baby Number Two

OK, so the truth about Buying For Baby is that you think you need bazillions of things, and what you really need is…about one-eighteenth of that. When you walk into Buy Buy Baby or Babies 'R' Us for the first time, all pregnant and confused-looking (or, in my case, vaguely panicky), a store attendant will hand you a long (long) list of all the crap the store wants you to think that you need. And that can be helpful to some extent, but it's also way overwhelming, and way way way way expensive.

You don't need all that. (Try handing over the list to a friend who's recently been through the newborn phase, and let her go to town with the crossing-off.)

Shopping for our second child has been a completely different experience. First of all, other than the fact that I obviously went a little nuts with the purchasing of teeny-tiny dresses when we found out that we'd be having a daughter…we actually hadn't bought anything at all up until last weekend. Which makes sense: we already have about 90% of the things we'll need (crib, dresser, baby carrier, infant car seat, et cetera). We still want to pick up a good double stroller and a Snap 'n' Go (we not-so-smartly got rid of ours when our son outgrew his infant car seat)…but other than that: we're pretty good to go, I think.

My Looks

Comfort Zone

Anthropologie tunicDeux 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:

Lifestyle

My Website Was Hacked And I Got It Back…But Here’s Why I’m Still Mad

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the story of my website being hacked - and how I got it back - and this feels like a good time for a follow-up. Because while things may have turned out "fine" for me…the truth is that nothing about this situation was "fine". First there's the fact that I'm not sure I'd call being forced to interact with criminals to keep your business secure an ideal situation, but more importantly: things could very easily have turned in a different direction.

I am certain that I was lucky; I am certain that 99% of similar cases would have turned out (do turn out) very, very differently; I am certain that it would be very, very easy for companies as big as HostMonster and GoDaddy to say something akin to "Super sorry; totally won't happen again"…and then do exactly nothing. Because memories are short and people forget and these companies have too much money to worry all that much about what, in the long-term, amounts to a PR blip.

I do not want that to happen. Because I have my business back, but the next person that this happens to may not be so lucky, and it doesn't matter whether you make thousands of dollars a month off of your site or just a few bucks here and there...or whether you run your site for nothing at all, just because you love it: your property - your work - matters. And so I've been following up with both GoDaddy and HostMonster in search of answers to why this happened, and to find out what they are doing to ensure that it will not happen again.