Follow Up

As a follow up to the last post on dishwashing. Everyone advised me not to tell Levin. Well, uh . . . too late. I told him.
A) Levin already knew because he does actually read my blog.
B) I'd never post something like that without his permission/blessing first.
C) He actually helped me write the last part of the post after blowing up the picture of the pot and seeing that in fact, there were pieces of oatmeal on it.
I felt a little guilty after reading everyone' comment that I shouldn't tell him and risk offending. I was expecting more analytical responses, i.e. well it depends on what percentage of the dishes are dirty, the multiplying factor of when I wash my dishes, like do I wash them when the grime is fresh and washes right off, or am I accustomed to washing crustified dishes that have sat for hours and need time to soak before the food can be chipped away. Those factors would be very important. Alas, I guess I should be more concerned about feelings and our marital happiness.

Second follow-up. The "deranged peacock dress". Read about it here. The end of June I got a ride to church with some other members so I didn't go early with Levin and he didn't see me get ready. I wore the dress. He wasn't so fond of it and I think offered me $50 to never wear it again, but my friend Catherine (Nigerian) came the next week with some material for me to have another dress made. I don't know if that means she loved that I was dressing Nigerian or thought it was so bad she should help me out with a new/less-peacocky dress. She'd used half the material and gave me the other half. It's at the tailor's right now. She informed me yesterday I paid the tailor twice as much as I should have. Darn the white face price! If it comes back reasonably I'll post a picture.

Last follow-up is about Robin Hood. For my birthday Levin bought me season 3! We got it from Amazon.uk. We got it on Friday and decided to watch it even though it is not my birthday since we won't be home during my birthday and don't know if we should subject our friend's children (we're babysitting at their house) to the show. The first 2 episodes we were pretty critical. The next ones we loved. Thanks Levin! Happy Birthday to me!

Dishwashing Dilemma

So I have a little dilemma. Sometimes using my magical powers I convince Levin do wash some dishes. Sometimes out of the goodness of his own sweet heart he will wash dishes while I'm taking a nap or something. Nothing cheers me up more than coming downstairs and going into the kitchen thinking of the dishes I need to wash and seeing that Levin has washed them! We don't have a dishwasher by the way.
SO the other night while I was putting Leah to bed Levin washed up some dishes! Sweet man! The next morning I was emptying the dish drainer and started to notice uh . . . . some of the dishes are a little dirty. I only had one dish left to put away or put back in the sink when I thought to take a picture. See below.
This pan not only was a little greasy on the inside, there was oatmeal still on the handle! Here is the dilemma. Do I just let it go or risk offending him (and him never volunteering to do the dishes) by letting him know what CLEAN really means? What is a girl to do?

You're So Vain or Kisses

So Leah is maybe a little vain. She LOVES to see herself in the mirror. Okay maybe all babies do. Leah also loves to eat your face. If you've ever held her for a while and get your face too near her mouth there is a chance she'll try to eat it. I flatter myself by saying she's not trying to eat me, but is trying to give me kisses.

The other day I saw Leah doing this with her little mirror. I didn't quite capture it on camera, but at one point (and a few times since then) I've seen her giving herself kisses in the mirror or else trying to eat her own face. Either way, it's cute to me.

Toilet Troubles

In our house things break . . . . a lot. It used to be the way I attracted the maintenance men to finally show up was to mop all my floors. Inevitably they would show up tracking their muddy feet all over. Now that I don't mop my floors as much my new way to attract them is to put Leah down for a nap. I just knew they'd finally show up the instant I got her to sleep. If you know Leah you know she doesn't nap long and so this short window is critical to me. What do you know, literally 60 seconds after I put her in the crib there are the guards calling to tell me my plumber is here. I will only bore you today with our current toilet troubles, but just know there are other problems and many things just waiting to break.

1. Leah's bedroom toilet - rocks back and forth if you sit on it. Ride it with caution.

2. Middle level toilet - cracked seat (see photo above.) This isn't our first cracked seat. Hold the fat jokes please. Once they replace the flimsy plastic seat with a real one we're okay. The problem is I spend most of my day in the middle level of our house and I'm lazy. I'll just say I've had a few pinches while using this toilet. I begged the plumber to come back quickly with the replacement.

3. Guest bedroom toilet - Yesterday in an effort not to wake Leah, Levin used the spare bedroom toilet and water gushed out of the back of the tank everywhere. Today the maintenance guy came and he and I could find nothing wrong. I call Levin and make fun of him a little because how could water run out of the back or the tank? There are no holes! Just as the man is showing me again as he flushes it that nothing happens and we are peering over the tank I see water start to spray out and jump back. I only got a little water in the face, Mr. Maintenance got a little bit more. Ha ha! A little hose is spraying upward. He bends it and tells me it's fixed and I say, well how do I know it's not going to pop back out again? Just as he finishes telling me it won't, it does and he gets another shot of water to the face. The whole thing is so funny that I'm not even mad at the guy for being a little bit lazy in fixing it and just trying to bend it down. A couple of more squirts later the guy has it it secured in place and hopefully it won't work it's way loose again, but I'm not holding my breath. Or maybe I should hold my breath, especially if I'm peering over that toilet again.

Self-Rising Flour

So I used to see recipes that called for self-rising flour and I thought, who buys this stuff and would pass on the recipe.
Then I moved to Nigeria where sometimes (often) grocery stores are out of something. I went to buy flour and my choices were pancake and self-rising. I bought one of each. Pancake is just for flat breads, we tried it once for pizza crust and it was okay, but kind of weird so I haven't used it again. Now the self-rising . . . . now that I have it, I can't find any recipes that use it other than biscuits.
Luckily at another grocery store I was able to find regular flour fairly soon after. But I'm stuck with this self-rising and I refuse to throw it away and waste it.
Anyone have any recipes that use self-rising flour?

Videos of Leah Clapping & Crawling

Last week Leah started crawling. It wasn't very fair of me to put her in a dress that is too long on only her 2nd day working on the skill, but she did alright anyway. To get her to crawl, especially for the camera I had to tantalize her with my cell phone. She has already called Levin's office driver Ade twice when she's gotten my cell phone in her hands. Oops! Good thing he loves her. The first time she got it and accidentally called him it was just minutes before armed robbers stole his phone from him. It was on a Saturday and he was in his own neighborhood in his own car. I thought I'd add those details so you wouldn't be worried about us. Anyway, maybe if she'd called him a few minutes later we could have talked to the thieves.

I Smell a Rat

Unfortunately, I don't mean "I smell a rat" in the figurative sense, but more in the literal sense. Our neighbor claims to have caught a couple of mice and a rat in her house. We share a wall as we are kind of like a duplex townhouse. I thought she meant she got them with traps, but I'm beginning to wonder if she meant poison too because I swear one crawled over on top of our bedroom and died. It stinks! I was paranoid it was actually in our bedroom but we have searched everywhere to find no carcase. The smell has not gotten worse, so I believe it is actually not in our house but above it somehow which I guess is a blessing. It started smelling on Friday and is still lingering . . .
I wanted to add a picture of a rat to make this post more "interesting" but the rat image results on my Google search all made me feel sick so I decided boring is better than grotesque.