Sleep??? What's that???

I don't know if any of you remember before we left for Costa Rica we were having some serious problems with Ella sleeping at night. She was just riddled with fear.

If you remember Ryan and I made a discovery trip to Costa Rica 3 Octobers ago, without the girls. Well to say the least this was a pretty hard time for our little girls. Now we are finding out how traumatic it was especially for little Ella.

In Kansas City we finally figured out that she was afraid we were going to leave her. When she saw the suitcases, and talked of going a trip she was thinking that we were leaving her again. Once we figured this out, a couple times a day we explained in great detail our plan to get on the plane together and we were all going to Costa Rica. Well let's just say we got through it.

Interestingly enough, (interesting is an interesting word...) we are in the exact position again with our move to El Salvador. Ella, poor thing, is again riddled with fear during the day. Loud noises just about due her in (motorcycles, thunder, car alarms, buses). She doesn't like to be left in a room by herself. And she is genuinely scared at night before going to sleep. I always vowed that I would not lay down with my kids until they fell asleep on a regular basis, because I didn't want to create a dependency. But here we are again! She is so afraid and just screams when we leave the room. She will wake in the middle of the night scared and wants me with her. And sometimes it takes awhile to get her back to sleep.

Wowee what a hard stage. We will get through it just like we did the last time, but I kind of miss my 8 hours of beauty sleep. We were doing so well sleeping at night since we graduated from language school (that's another story all together).

Who turned the Lights Out???? (who, who)

We frequently have the power go out here and it is truly amazing to me how well the girls do with it (now). The evening power outages were a little rough at first but we have worked through a lot of that. For some strange reason kids don't like the dark...hhmmmm? Now it is as though we don't even skip a beat. I have matches in a place where I can easily find in the dark right by some candles. After lighting a couple I go find the girls very own flashlights, NOW it is fun for them.

Anyone who knows me knows I love candles. Here we have candles in every room, but here they are not just for decoration. In the states, candles are for decoration and for fragrance, however, here they are all of those things but also a necessity. Whoohoooo!

The lady that lived in our house before we moved in left a lot of candles and candle holders. She did something that I thought was a great idea that I will pass along. Have you had candles that decoratively were great but you knew as soon as you burned them they would spill wax over everything? Well here's an idea that can even preserve the shape of the pretty candle and save the furniture from being covered in wax. She took square or round decorative candles and burned them enough to melt a hole big enough for a tea light candle to fit inside. So she would just replace the tea lights everytime instead of burning down these beautiful decorative candles. Great idea huh?