Thrown back into the reality

Today was my first day home alone with all the kids while Drew was back at work. Mornings are rough. Since I am not sleeping that well I am very tired and groggy in the morning. I had to make a good effort to just start moving because I knew if I sat down on the couch we would watch movies all morning and accomplish nothing. So right after breakfast I took the kids upstairs to Annalyn and Emery's room and started working on their closet. I turned on the Frozen soundtrack and worked away while the kids played dress up. We are having a garage sale this weekend so I am in a mad dash to get out anything and everything that I don't have any use for! The rest of the morning/lunch/nap time went surprisingly well. No random crying fits from any of the kids and we actually finished up lunch in time to play outside while we waited for the school bus. I haven't actually mustered up the energy yet to take all the kids outside alone. I knew it was coming so after trying to offer them many craft options and movie selections and still hearing them beg to go outside and play I caved. We live in a neighborhood with lots of other families with kids the same age as ours there is always a little mommy social time while the kids play. Fortunately my neighbors have been amazing. Even though we all just met a few short months ago I have grown close to many of them. No one seems to mind helping me chase Sam around or to keep an extra set of eyes on the girls. I was nervous though because the last time we were all outside playing Ellie was still alive and well inside my belly. We were all chatting about how huge my belly was getting and how it probably wouldn't be much longer at all. They all knew I wanted a little girl and we talked about how Elliot was such an adorable name for a baby girl. As with other things that have happened recently I was making too big of a deal out of the situation in my mind. Everything went well, I didn't have much of the anxiety that I had been feeling and I was even able to chat with a couple of the other moms about Ellie. I shared some of the pictures with one of my friends and we both gushed over how beautiful Ellie was. I had to laugh when my friend also commented on how long Ellie's finger nails were because Drew and I were JUST talking about it this morning. She would have had to get a nail trim quickly or she would have scratched her tiny little cheeks to pieces! A friend from my MOPS group brought us dinner, a wonderful chicken salad! The meal train has been such a blessing by taking the burden of having to prepare meals on top of physically/emotionally recovering and trying to tend to the kids. By the time dinner was finished I was so ready to go to bed but we still had homework and other "normal" nightly things to do. I will be so glad when my energy level is back to normal and my physical pain/discomfort has gone away. I have to constantly remind myself that just because Ellie is not here I did just have a baby. I get tired easily and my hips are still very achy. Also I have been stressing out EVERY single day, multiple times a day about my photo card. I contacted the company and their technicians are still trying to work on recovering the images off of the compact flash card. I don't want to say I have lost hope but I guess after something horrible happens you don't get your hopes up as easily. I am hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. I will be devastated if we don't get the photos back but I will have to find a way to work past it if it happens.