Life, Uncropped & Unedited {WIWS}

Every Sunday I keep meaning to take a What I Wore Sunday picture, but I usually end up too exhausted to set things up for a picture by the time the kids are all down for naps...

Confession:  When I take my usual outfit pictures, I sweep away any mess on the floor, move the side table to hold the camera, and crop the heck out of it to make it less cluttered.

This dress was an AMAZING find and so worth the low price - perfect for maternity, post partum, and any stage! 

See?  That's my usual location, free of all distraction (and weeks ago, hence the much smaller belly!)

So yesterday morning I was VERY limited on time - we managed to sleep in a little bit, so by the time I had eaten breakfast I only had about 5-10 minutes to get ready for our usual early Mass.  And it was COLD, so my shorter maternity dresses weren't going to work because they would require tights and yeah, maternity tights take waaaaay too long to put on.

But my good friend the maxi dress came to the rescue!  This thing has been serving me well since I was pregnant with Cecilia - it's non-maternity but has the right waistline to fit a growing bump, and it's dressy enough to wear to Mass.  I threw on a slouchy sweater to stay warm and basically felt like I was wearing sweats.  So comfy.  So cozy!

(More maxi skirt & dress styling ideas here)

And yeah, no pictures were happening...  But with the kids occupied watching a movie and soup simmering on the stove, I thought maybe I'd take off my apron and try to get a picture.

And then Elizabeth came upstairs and just wanted to snuggle and snuggle!

So I thought, you know, whatever.  Let's just do this.  Propped the camera up on a basket of dirty laundry and let the timer snap away.

Bare feet, train tracks galore, slipcover askew, Calvin & Hobbes book newly unearthed from its hiding spot (providing John Paul with all sorts of non-age-appropriate vocabulary), undressed toddler, muffin tin being used to hold magnets, Cookie Monster on the couch, and bins of toys hiding in the dining room waiting to be rotated out (or given away forever if it were up to the husband).

This, my friends, is life right now.  Normally we do a big clean before anyone goes downstairs for TV time, but it's been an exhausting week and the kids have decided they'd rather keep playing than watch TV, so cleaning just hasn't been happening.

The belly still seems remarkably small to me because I keep comparing myself to where I was with the twins at this point!  35 weeks, and when I was pregnant with them I only had 2 weeks left!  It's hard to imagine I've got 5-7 weeks to go, still...

And yes, these photos are now cropped & straightened because I can't *not* when they're so crooked!

Sweet Elizabeth always wants to snuggle into whatever scarf I'm wearing, and it's just the cutest!

But then she was offended that the camera timer was being weird...

So that's life right now.  I'm thankful for hardwood floors that let it all be swept up in minutes when I need to feel like things are a little less chaotic.  And I'm thankful that if need be, we can just let things get messy for a bit because that's just where we are right now!

Linking up with Fine Linen & Purple for What I Wore Sunday - go check out more outfits!