For the Brennan's, a young family in the Chicago area, it was bedtime stories by flashlight, followed by sleep soaked in sweat, for the second night in a row.

"It's sweaty. It's got to be above 90 in here, it's hot, there's not much air moving around," dad Pat Brennan said.

The misery continues as a prolonged heat wave tortures an estimated 1.4 million Americans still without power, from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic.

"When I go outside to play I'm all hot and sweaty, and when I come in I usually expect a burst of cold air. But now it's just hotness," youngster Laura Holt in Baltimore County, Md., said.

In this heat, ice has become the most valuable commodity. Pinehurst Wine Shop in Maryland is buying extra ice just to give it away at the end of the night.

That ice may salvage a few more perishables. Families have lost food and have to spend money on eating out.

"We can't afford to go out every single meal, so we've been bringing some stuff home, using the grill, used up everything we could possibly use up in the first 48 hours," one woman without power said.

In Randallstown, Md., Angela Griggs can't remember how many times she's called the power company.

"It's been hot. It's been dangerously hot. I think it's a little incompetent in the way the process is being handled. Seven days to me is unacceptable," Griggs said.

Power crews in the Richmond, Va.-area worked to install new poles after Friday night's monster storm tore down power lines. But for many, it could be well past the Fourth of July before power is restored.

"There's simply not enough people. There's just too many problems," Douglas Revie, a crew leader for Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, said.

So more young families like the Brennan's are likely to be reading bedtime stories by flashlight again tonight.