Things I Miss/Don't Miss in Nigeria

Things I Miss:
1. Levin - but that is soon to end! He comes tomorrow morning!!!
2. Lucy - I feel like I am constantly cleaning and it is only Leah and me making messes. Well, some of it was initial cleaning of a house that has been abandoned so to speak, but still! I actually had to clean my own toilet the other day and I vacuum all the time! Whereas before I'd just calculate how many more days until Lucy arrived and if it was worth me actually doing it or not and well, let's just say a lot of times I decided not worth it.
3. Leah's toys, especially her book basket she'd climb into and read by herself. I have a lot more entertaining to do now.
4. The chair in Leah's room. Our night-time ritual of reading is a lot less comfortable when I sit on the floor and sometimes I fear I won't be able to get my large body off the floor.
5. Mangoes. I bought one the other day and it was disgusting and very small in comparison to the ones I was getting in Lagos.
6. Settlers. Levin keeps playing with our friends and I'm so jealous because I miss it.

Things I Don't Miss
1. AFN - our military TV. I actually didn't mind that so much, but I'm loving my DVR. So nice to start a show late and fast-forward through commercials and dumb performances on American Idol.
2. Entrapment. I get to get in my car and drive and go where I want and not wait for a driver. Though I do miss some of the friendly drivers I had - i.e. Ade.
3. The smell. Last night I drove home in the evening from the church and could smell "farming" not exhaust fumes and other smells I probably don't want to identify. Fresh air!

This isn't something I miss or don't miss, but just an observation. Now when I go to church I blend in with the other whities and there are only a few black members. Not always, but at least in church, I started to just feel blended in and not like the glowing white lady, but other times I was very aware of my whiteness. I sometimes want to go sit next to the black members here in Maryland and ask if they feel like they blend in or do they notice the difference. I've lived on both sides now and appreciate that sometimes it does feel awkward to be different.
There was a picture in the church in Lagos taken one of our first months there that somehow never got taken down. I was at a Relief Society activity and we took a group picture. I was the only white woman in the group. I always wished I had a copy of it, but don't. If I did, it would be posted here. As Sesame Street says, "one of these things is not like the other one" and sometimes you feel weird.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like a huge relief when I go to church now that I say, oh yes, all these white people. It's not that way at all. Just observing the difference. . . . .

Then and Now

Here is what a little TLC, a lot of time, and oh yeah a lot of checks made payable to a guy name Lance have done for our house. There are so many things not pictured, like all the work in the crawl space, and I wish I had a picture of the room called by many different names, but the one with all the windows shown in an earlier post that I mentioned you could still see siding on the house on the walls. It was an addition by the former owner.
Here is the master bathroom. Look in the mirror to see the reflection of what the rest of the bathroom looked like.

Here it is now. . . . the paint color looked good with the tile when I was holding one square and a paint sample at Lowe's. They're not my favorite together now, but oh well live and learn and hope it won't turn off future renters while we're in Moscow.
It is still a work in progress, hence the tools. I take pictures and email them to Levin and just decided to put some on the blog. I don't clean up Lance's messes just to make the picture look better. Heck, I don't clean up my own messes to make the picture look better. As you can see, our toilet is a little more "private" now. We had to lose the second door into the bathroom to make this bath tub fit, but I didn't want a hall entrance into the master bath anyway. We still have to paint that mirror frame white and get a new window covering, caulk, hang towel bars, etc.

This is our master bedroom. I've never seen a master bedroom so big! The former owner added it on and I guess they liked their space. We're not sure what they were going for with these holes in the wall. Windows? Big screens? Windows??

Also, you can't see it here, but you had to walk through the old master bedroom to get to this bedroom which kind of made the old master worthless. We closed up the old master with a wall and a door and it is now Leah's room.

Bye bye holes!!

Someday maybe we'll get a few more decorations. I haven't even bought all of the pillows to fill the shams this comforter set came with.

This is the before picture of the kitchen. Notice, no oven, just a range. The oven is further to the right and can't be seen in this picture. It was built into the cupboards and was not big enough to put a cookie sheet into and was a million years old. Oh and you could barely open it without hitting the wall and a new one would never be that small so we couldn't replace it where it was. Also, notice the fake brick wall as a backsplash behind the oven. Hated it! The formica had some problems too.

This is how it looks now - sorry this is too close, but I took the picture to show Levin that I finally had an oven and could stop living on microwavable food. And no, we didn't do granite, we're not that rich. We did get a new refrigerator since the old one smelled like rotten fish every time you opened it. Every time we went to the house we had to beg my niece and nephews not to open it. The dishwasher is new too, but don't get me started on that thing because I'm angry about it. Yes, I know the microwave sticks out like a sore thumb because it's black, but we had to stop spending money somewhere and it works very very well.

We've replaced a lot of ugly fans, a lot of tacky light fixtures, painted all the walls, etc. One quick fix tip I learned is that by just changing the knobbies on the kitchen and hall bathroom cupboards it made them look a lot nicer. We still need the knobbies put on our master bath cabinets. We had the doors re-finished in there.

If you know anyone that in July 2011 wants to rent a really long house (all one story, but many square feet) in southern Maryland, let us know! After we get our fence built you can keep horses here and we live just a few blocks from an awesome horse park.

And The Jealousy Begins

Some things about growing up Leah seems to like - for instance she has graduated from high chair to booster. Looks like she's pretty happy in her new situation. She actually spends too much time in this seat because she loves to buckle herself in. I can't count the number of times I've had to unbuckle her when she says or screams "o-en" just so she can buckle herself right back in. She has a HUGE fascination with buckles that I'm a little worried about.

Other parts of becoming "big sister" I'm a little worried about. I was planning to hide this swing in a closet, but got distracted and didn't. This is what I feared would happen. Leah found it and climbed right on in. Leah never had a swing because we couldn't get one to Lagos. I'm a little worried how she's going to handle the fact that this is for the baby and not for her. I've hidden it away to post-pone the fighting about it. I have a feeling this is going to be just one of many things she has a hard time dealing with while becoming "big sister."

This swing was my Craigslist find - it plugs in or uses batteries. Yea! Most just use batteries so I was so happy! I had a Craigslist failure the day before when I bought a bunch of clothes for Leah only to realize that all but 2 shirts were tank tops (which we don't let her wear) and there were very few bottoms. They weren't high end brands like the lady said they were either. We did get in the same deal some baby boy clothes that are pretty good, some never even worn (the lady ended up with a girl instead of a boy) so we were happy with those at least. I guess you can't win them all on Craigslist.

Our New Home

In Lagos we had two huge tv's. Here, we have one little one and I need help moving the couch so I have my little seat there on the left on the stairs. It helps me not watch too much TV I guess. Lance, the guy working on our house, is supposed to have a guy help him move it tomorrow lest you feel too sorry for me. BYUTV is showing so you know I'm spiritual. This room was completely unfinished when we bought the house with a cement floor, a screen door where the stairs are, and the siding was still showing on that wall. The trim on the windows isn't completely finished, but it's an amazing transformation.
Leah in the back yard.

Leah and her "brother" Milky Way. We stayed at my brother and sister-in-law's house our first week here and they have a horse so every time we went outside Leah would say "neigh, neigh!" I think I finally have her convinced to say "moo." She says it every time we see him either from a window or outside. She actually fell into this sitting position and I was a little scared because Milky Way had been parked in that area before and well, there were some remains but luckily she didnt' fall into anything gross. We are the only ones you can see a farm animal from the street. Well, some people you can see their horse. So I call us white trash, but Levin disagrees and says something has to eat all our tall grass. Some day our fence will be built and he'll be more hidden from view.

I may have posted this picture before, but I found it still on my camera for some reason. It's from Christmas obviously. I can't help but think Leah looks like Glenn Beck in this picture. If I'm dead wrong you can blame it on the fact that I've only seen his show like two times.